HALF   A   MAN 

THE   STATUS   OF   THE    NEGRO 
IN   NEW  YORK 


HALF  A   MAN 


THE   STATUS   OF   THE    NEGRO 
IN   NEW   YORK 


BT 

MARY  WHITE  OVINGTON 


WITH  A  FOREWORD  BY  DR.  FRANZ  BOAS 
OF  COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO 

FOURTH  AVENUE  &  30TH  STREET,  NEW  YORK 
LONDON,  BOMBAY,  AND  CALCUTTA 

1911 


Copyright,  1911,  hy 
LoNGMANs,  Green,  and  Co. 


THE  •  PLIMPTOS   •  PBKSS 

[W  ■  D  •  O] 
KORWOOD  •  MASS  •  U  •  S  •  A 


/V307 


TO 

THE  MEMORY  OF  MY  FATHER 

THEODORE  TWEEDY 

OVINGTON 


FOREWORD 

Miss  Ovington's  description  of  the  status 
of  the  Negro  in  New  York  City  is  based  on 
a  most  painstaking  inquiry  into  his  social 
and  economic  conditions,  and  brings  out  in 
the  most  forceful  way  the  difficulties  under 
which  the  race  is  laboring,  even  in  the  large 
cosmopoKtan  population  of  New  York.  It 
is  a  refutation  of  the  claims  that  the  Negro 
has  equal  opportunity  with  the  whites,  and 
that  his  failure  to  advance  more  rapidly 
than  he  has,  is  due  to  innate  inabihty. 

Many  students  of  anthropology  recognize 
that  no  proof  can  be  given  of  any  material 
inferiority  of  the  Negro  race;  that  without 
doubt  the  bulk  of  the  individuals  composing 
the  race  are  equal  in  mental  aptitude  to 
the  bulk  of  our  own  people;  that,  although 
their  hereditary  aptitudes  may  lie  in  slightly 
different  directions,  it  is  very  improbable 
that  the  majority  of  individuals  composing 


viii  FOREWORD 

the  white  race  should  possess  greater  ability 
than  the  Negro  race. 

The  anthropological  argument  is  invari- 
ably  met  by  the  objection  that  the  achieve- 
ments  of  the  two  races  are  unequal,  while 
their  opportunities  are  the  same.  Every 
demonstration  of  the  inequahty  of  oppor- 
tunity  will  therefore  help  to  dissipate 
prejudices  that  prevent  the  best  possible 
development  of  a  large  number  of  our 
Citizens. 

The  Negro  of  our  times  carries  even  more 
heavily  the  bürden  of  his  racial  descent 
than  did  the  Jew  of  an  earlier  period;  and 
the  intellectual  and  moral  qualities  required 
to  insure  success  to  the  Negro  are  infinitely 
greater  than  those  demanded  from  the  white, 
and  will  be  the  greater,  the  stricter  the 
segregation  of  the  Negro  Community. 

The  strong  development  of  racial  con- 
sciousness,  which  has  been  increasing  during 
the  last  Century  and  is  just  beginning  to 
show  the  first  signs  of  waning,  is  the  gravest 
obstacle  to  the  progress  of  the  Negro  race, 
as  it  is  an  obstacle  to  the  progress  of  all 
strongly  individualized  social  groups.     The 


FOREWORD  ix 

simple  presentation  of  observations,  like 
those  given  by  Miss  Ovington,  may  help  us 
to  overcome  more  quickly  that  seif -centred 
attitude  which  can  see  progress  only  in  the 
domination  of  a  single  type. 

This  investigation  was  carried  on  by 
Miss  Ovington  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Greenwich  House  Committee  on  Social 
Investigations,  of  which  she  was  a  Fellow.^ 

Franz  Boas. 


^  The  Greenwich  House  Committee  on  Social  Investiga- 
tions is  composed  of  Edwin  R.  A.  Seligman,  Chairman, 
Franz  Boas,  Edward  T.  Devine,  Livingston  Farrand, 
Franklin  H.  Giddings,  Henry  R.  Seager,  Vladimir  G. 
Simkhovitch,  Secretary. 

Miss  Ovington's  is  the  second  publication  of  the  Com- 
mittee, the  first  being  Mrs.  Louise  Bolard  More's  "  Wage- 
Earners'  Budgets,"  published  by  Henry  Holt  &  Co. 


viii  FOREWORD 

the  white  race  should  possess  greater  ability 
than  the  Negro  race. 

The  anthropological  argument  is  invari- 
ably  met  by  the  objection  that  the  achieve- 
ments  of  the  two  races  are  unequal,  while 
their  opportunities  are  the  same.  Every 
demonstration  of  the  inequahty  of  oppor- 
tunity  will  therefore  help  to  dissipate 
prejudices  that  prevent  the  best  possible 
development  of  a  large  number  of  our 
Citizens. 

The  Negro  of  our  times  carries  even  more 
heavily  the  bürden  of  his  racial  descent 
than  did  the  Jew  of  an  earlier  period;  and 
the  intellectual  and  moral  qualities  required 
to  insure  success  to  the  Negro  are  infinitely 
greater  than  those  demanded  from  the  white, 
and  will  be  the  greater,  the  stricter  the 
segregation  of  the  Negro  Community. 

The  strong  development  of  racial  con- 
sciousness,  which  has  been  increasing  during 
the  last  Century  and  is  just  beginning  to 
show  the  first  signs  of  waning,  is  the  gravest 
obstacle  to  the  progress  of  the  Negro  race, 
as  it  is  an  obstacle  to  the  progress  of  all 
strongly  individualized  social  groups.     The 


FOREWORD  ix 

simple  presentation  of  observations,  like 
those  given  by  Miss  Ovington,  may  help  us 
to  overcome  more  quickly  that  seif -centred 
attitude  which  can  see  progress  only  in  the 
domination  of  a  single  type. 

This  investigation  was  carried  on  by 
Miss  Ovington  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Greenwich  House  Committee  on  Social 
Investigations,  of  which  she  was  a  Fellow.^ 

Franz  Boas. 


^  The  Greenwich  House  Committee  on  Social  Investiga- 
tions is  composed  of  Edwin  R.  A.  Seligman,  Chairman, 
Franz  Boas,  Edward  T.  Devine,  Livingston  Farrand, 
Franklin  H.  Giddings,  Henry  R.  Seager,  Vladimir  G. 
Simkhovitch,  Secretary. 

Miss  Ovington's  is  the  second  publication  of  the  Com- 
mittee, the  first  being  Mrs.  Louise  Bolard  More's  "  Wage- 
Earners'  Budgets,"  published  by  Henry  Holt  &  Co. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    "Up  from  Siavery" 5 

II     Where  THE  Negro  Lives        ....  31 

III  The  Child  of  the  Tenement     ...  52 

IV  Earning    a    Living  —  Manual    Labor 

AND   THE   TrADES 75 

V    Earning  a  Living  —  Business  and  the 

Professions 106 

VI    The    Colored    Woman    as    a    Bread 

WiNNER 138 

VII    Rich  and  Poor 170 

VIII    The  Negro  and  the  Municipality       .  195 

IX     CONCLUSION 218 

Appendix 229 

Index 233 


HALF   A    MAN 


HALF  A  MAN 


INTRODUCTION 

Six  years  ago  I  met  a  young  colored  man, 
a  College  student  recently  returned  from 
Germany  where  he  had  been  engaged  in 
graduate  work.  He  was  born,  he  told  me, 
in  one  of  the  Gulf  States,  and  I  questioned 
him  as  to  whether  he  intended  going  back 
to  the  South  to  teach.  His  ans  wer  was  in 
the  negative.  "My  father  has  attained  suc- 
cess  in  his  native  state,"  he  said,  "but  when 
I  ceased  to  be  a  boy,  he  advised  me  to  live 
in  the  North  where  my  manhood  would  be 
respected.  He  himself  cannot  continually 
endure  the  position  in  which  he  is  placed, 
and  in  the  summer  he  comes  North  to  be  a 
man.  No,"  correcting  himself,  "to  be  half 
a  man.  A  Negro  is  wholly  a  man  only  in 
Europe." 

Half  a  man!     During  the  six  years  that  I 

have  been  in  touch  with  the  problem  of  the 

Negro  in  New  York  this  characterization  has 
s 


4  INTRODUCTION 

grown  in  significance  to  me.  I  have  endeav- 
ored  to  know  the  life  of  the  Negro  as  I  know 
the  life  of  the  white  American,  and  I  have 
learned  that  while  New  York  at  times  gives 
füll  recognition  to  his  manhood,  again,  its 
race  prejudice  arrests  his  development  as 
certainly  as  severe  poverty  arrests  the  de- 
velopment of  the  tenement  child.  Perhaps 
a  study  of  this  shifting  attitude  on  the  part 
of  the  dominant  race,  and  of  the  Negro's 
reaction  under  it,  may  not  be  unimportant; 
for  the  color  question  cannot  be  ignored  in 
America,  nor  should  the  position  taken  by 
her  largest  city  be  overlooked.  And  those 
who  love  their  fellows  may  be  glad,  among 
New  York's  four  millions  —  its  Slavs  and 
Italians,  its  Russians  and  Asiatics  —  to  meet 
these  dark  people  who  speak  our  language 
and  who  for  many  generations  have  made 
this  country  their  home. 


CHAPTER  I 

"Up  from  Slavery" 

The  Status  of  the  Negro  in  New  Amster- 
dam, a  slave  in  a  pioneer  Community,  dif- 
fered  fundamentally  from  his  position  today 
in  New  York.  His  history  from  the  seven- 
teenth  to  the  twentieth  Century  contains 
many  exciting  incidents,  but  those  only 
need  be  considered  here  that  show  a  prog- 
ress  or  a  retardation  in  his  attainment  to 
manhood.  What  were  his  struggles  in  the 
past  to  secure  his  rights  as  a  man? 

Slavery  in  the  early  days  of  the  colonies 
was  more  brutal  than  at  the  time  of  final 
emancipation.  Sa  vages  recently  arrived 
from  Africa  lacked  the  docihty  of  blacks 
reared  in  bondage,  and  burning  and  tortur- 
ing,  as  well  as  whipping,  were  recognized 
modes  of  punishment.  Masters  looked  upon 
their  Negroes,   bought  at  the  Wall  Street 

5 


6  HALF  A  MAN 

market  from  among  the  cargo  of  a  recently 
arrived  slaver,  with  some  suspicion  and 
fear.  Nor  were  their  apprehensions  en- 
tirely  without  reason.  In  1712  some  of 
the  discontented  among  the  New  York 
slaves  met  in  an  orchard  in  Maiden  Lane 
and  set  fire  to  an  outhouse.  Defending 
themselves  against  the  Citizens  who  ran  to 
put  out  the  flames,  they  fired,  killing  nine 
men  and  wounding  six.  Retribution  soon 
followed.  They  were  pursued  when  they 
attempted  flight,  captured  and  executed  — 
some  hanged,  some  burned  at  the  stake, 
some  left  suspended  in  chains  to  starve  to 
death. 

Perhaps  it  was  the  memory  of  this  small 
revolt  that  caused  the  people  of  New  York 
in  1741  to  lay  the  blame  for  a  series  of  con- 
flagrations  upon  their  slaves.  Nine  fires 
that  seemed  to  be  incendiary  came  one  upon 
another,  and  a  robbery  was  committed. 
To  escape  death  herseif,  a  worthless  white 
servant  girl  gave  testimony  against  the 
Negroes  who  frequented  a  tavern  where  she 
was  employed,  declaring  that  a  plot  had 
been    conceived  whereby  the   slaves  would 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  7 

kill  all  the  white  men  and  take  control 
of  the  city.  New  York  was  aflame  with 
fear,  and  evidence  that  at  another  time 
would  have  been  rejected,  was  listened  to 
by  the  judges  with  grave  attention.  The 
slaves  were  allowed  no  defence,  and  before 
the  city  had  recovered  from  its  fright,  it 
had  burned  fourteen  Negroes,  hanged  eigh- 
teen,  and  transported  seventy-one.^ 

Historians  today  think  that  the  slaves 
were  in  no  way  concerned  in  this  so-called 
"plot."  The  two  thousand  blacks  in  the 
city  might  have  done  much  mischief  to  the 
ten  thousand  whites,  but  their  servile  con- 
dition  made  an  organized  movement  among 
them  impossible.  We  may  infer,  however, 
from  the  fear  which  they  provoked,  that 
they  were  not  all  docile  servants.  In  a 
letter  written  at  the  port  of  New  York  in 
1756,  an  English  naval  officer  says  of  the 
city,  **The  laborious  people  in  general  are 
Guinea  Negroes  who  lie  under  particular 
restraints  from  the  attempts  they  have 
made  to  massacre  the  inhabitants  for  their 

*  Daniel  Horsmanden,  "New  York  Conspiracy,  or  a  His- 
tory  of  the  Negro  Plot." 


8  HALF  A  MAN 

liberty."!  Janvier  in  his  "Old  New  York" 
thinks,  "that  the  alarm  bred  by  the  so- 
called  Negro  plot  of  1741  was  most  effective 
in  checking  the  growth  of  slavery  in  that 
city."  Probably  the  restlessness  of  the  slaves, 
their  efforts  toward  manhood,  in  a  Community 
where  there  was  Httle  economic  justification 
for  slavery,  contributed  to  the  movement 
for  emancipation  that  began  in  1777. 

Emancipation  came  gradually  to  the  New 
York  Negro.  Gouverneur  Morris  at  the 
State  constitutional  Convention  of  1776-1777 
recommended  that  "the  future  legislature 
of  the  State  of  New  York  take  the  most 
effectual  measures  consistent  with  the  pubhc 
safety  and  the  private  property  of  individ- 
uals  for  abohshing  domestic  slavery  within 
the  same,  so  that  in  future  ages  every  human 
being  who  breathes  the  air  of  this  State  shall 
enjoy  the  Privileges  of  a  freeman."  The 
postponement  of  action  to  a  future  legis- 
lature was  keenly  regretted  by  John  Jay, 
who  was  absent  from  the  Convention  when 
the   slavery   question   arose,    but   who   had 

^  James  Grant  Wilson,  "History  of  New  York,"  Vol.  II, 
p.  314. 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  9 

hoped  that  New  York  might  be  a  leader  in 
emancipation.  The  state's  initial  measure 
for  abolishing  slavery  was  in  1785,  when  it 
prohibited  the  sale  of  slaves  in  New  York. 
This  was  followed  in  1799  by  an  act  giving 
freedom  to  the  children  of  slaves,  and  in 
1817  by  a  further  act  providing  for  the  abo- 
lition  of  slavery  throughout  the  state  in 
1827.  This  law  went  into  effect  July  4, 
1827,  the  emancipation  day  of  the  Negroes 
in  New  York. 

With  gradual  emancipation  and  the  cessa- 
tion  of  the  sale  of  slaves,  the  Negroes  numer- 
ically  became  unimportant  in  the  city.  In 
1800  they  constituted  ten  and  a  half  per 
Cent  of  the  population.  Half  a  Century 
later,  while  they  had  doubled  tlieir  numbers, 
the  immense  influx  of  foreign  immigrants 
brought  their  proportion  down  to  two  and 
seven-tenths  per  cent.  In  1850  and  1860 
their  positive  as  well  as  there  relative  num- 
ber  decreased,  and  it  was  not  until  twenty 
years  ago  that  they  began  to  show  some 
gain.  The  last  census  returns  of  1900  give 
Greater  New  York  (including  Brooklyn) 
60ß66  Negroes  in  a  population  of  3,437,202, 


10  HALF  A  MAN 

one  and  eight-tenths  per  cent.  It  seems  prob- 
able that  the  census  of  1910  will  show  a  large 
positive  and  a  slight  relative  Negro  increase.  ^ 
The  relative  decrease  in  the  number  of 
Negroes  did  not,  however,  produce  a  de- 
crease in  the  agitation  upon  their  presence 
and  Position  in  the  city.  Their  political 
Status  was  a  subject  for  heated  discussion 
even   before   their   complete   emancipation. 

^Population  of  New  York  from  1800  to  1900: 
Total  and  Negro. 

borough  of  manhattan 

Percentage 
Total  Negro  of  Negroes 

1800 60,515  6,382  10.5 

1810 96,373  9,823  10.2 

1820 123,706  10,886  8.8 

1830 202,589  13,976  6.9 

1840 312,710  16,358  5.2 

1850 515,547  13,815  2.7 

1860 805,658  12,574  1.6 

1870 942,292  13,072  1.5 

BOROUGHS  OF  MANHATTAN  AND  BRONX 

1880 1,206,299    19,663        1.6 

1890 1,515,301    23,601        1.6 

1900 2,050,600    38,616        1.9 

GREATER    NEW    YORK 

1900 3,437,202        60,666  1.8 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  11 

The  first  state  Constitution,  drafted  in  1777, 
was  without  color  discrimination,  since  it 
based  the  suffrage  upon  a  property  quali- 
fication  requiring  voters  for  governor  and 
Senators  to  be  freeholders  owning  property 
worth  £100.  A  Negro  with  such  a  holding 
was  a  phenomenon,  a  curiosity.  But  by 
1821,  when  the  framing  of  the  second  Con- 
stitution was  in  progress,  Negroes  of  some 
education  were  an  appreciable  dement  in 
the  Population,  and  with  them  ignorant, 
recently  emancipated  slaves.  Should  they 
be  admitted  to  the  füll  manhood  suffrage 
contemplated  for  the  whites?  Those  who 
favored  the  new  democratic  movement  were 
doubtful  of  its  applicability  to  colored  people. 
Livingston,  a  champion  of  universal  white 
manhood  suffrage,  was  against  giving  the 
black  man  the  vote.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  conservative  Chancellor  Kent,  appre- 
hending  in  the  new  Constitution  "a  disposi- 
tion  to  encroach  on  private  rights,  —  to 
disturb  chartered  Privileges  and  to  weaken, 
degrade,  and  overawe  the  administration  of 
justice,"  would  yet  have  made  no  color 
discrimination,  and  Peter  A.  Jay,  who  did 


n  HALF  A  MAN 

not  believe  in  universal  white  manhood 
suffrage,  urged  that  colored  men,  natives  of 
the  country,  should  derive  from  its  institu- 
tions  the  same  Privileges  as  white  persons. 
The  second  Constitution  when  adopted  en- 
franchised  practically  all  white  men,  but 
gave  the  Negroes  a  property  qualification  of 
$250.  The  issue  of  the  revolution,  however, 
was  not  far  from  men's  thoughts,  and  *  Tax- 
ation without  reprcsentation "  was  not  per- 
mitted;  for  while  no  colored  man  might  vote 
without  a  freehold  estate  valued  at  250  dol- 
lars,  no  person  of  color  was  subject  to  direct 
taxation  unless  he  should  he  possessed  of  such 
real  estate. 

In  1846  a  third  constitutional  Convention 
was  held,  and  the  same  matter  came  up  for 
debate.  John  L.  Russell  of  St.  Lawrence 
declared  that  "the  Almighty  had  created 
the  black  man  inferior  to  the  white  man," 
while  Daniel  S.  Waterbury  of  Delaware 
County  believed  that  "the  argument  that 
because  a  race  of  men  is  marked  by  a  pecu- 
liarity  of  color  and  crooked  hair  they  are  not 
endowed  with  a  mind  equal  to  another  class 
who   have   other   peculiarities   is   unworthy 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  13 

of  men  of  sense."  John  H.  Hunt  of  New 
York  City  proclaimed  that  "We  want  no 
masters,  least  of  all  no  Negro  masters.  .  .  . 
Negroes  are  aliens."  And  lie  predicted  that 
the  practical  effect  of  their  admission  to  the 
suffrage  would  be  their  exclusion  from  Man- 
hattan Island.  A  delegation  of  colored  men 
appeared  at  Albany  before  the  suffrage  com- 
mittee,  but  their  arguments  and  those  of 
their  friends  produced  no  effect.  The  new 
Constitution  contained  the  same  Negro  prop- 
erty  qualification,  and  it  was  not  until  1874, 
after  the  passage  of  the  fifteenth  amend- 
ment  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  that  legislation  placed  the  Negro 
voter  of  New  York  upon  the  same  footing 
as  the  white. ^ 

Had  New  York  sincerely  desired  to  keep 
the  Negro  in  an  inferior  position,  it  could 
have  accomplished  this  by  refusing  him  an 
education.  This  it  never  did,  though  it 
suffered  much  tribulation  regarding  the  place 
and  manner  of  his  instruction.     Before  the 

1  For  a  füll  account  of  the  Negro's  political  Status  in  New 
York  consult  Charles  Z.  Lincoln's  "  Constitutional  History  of 
New  York." 


14  HALF  A  MAN 

establishment  of  a  public  school  System,  the 
Manumission  society,  an  association  com- 
posed  largely  of  Friends,  though  including 
in  its  membership  John  Jay,  De  Witt  Clin- 
ton, and  Alexander  Hamilton,  undertook 
the  education  of  the  Negro.  In  1787  it 
opened  a  school  for  Africans  on  Cliff  Street. 
One  of  the  early  teachers  was  Charles  C. 
Andrews,  whose  little  book  on  "The  Afri- 
can  Free  Schools,"  published  in  1830,  shows 
a  kindly  tolerance  for  the  black  race.  "As 
a  result  of  forty  years'  experience,"  he  writes, 
"the  idea  respecting  the  capacity  of  the 
African  race  to  receive  a  respectable  and 
even  a  liberal  education  has  not  been  vision- 
ary."  And  he  recites  the  names  of  some 
of  his  pupils:  "Rev.  Theodore  S.  Wright, 
graduate  of  Princeton  Theological  Seminary; 
John  B.  Russworm,  graduate  of  Bowdoin; 
Edward  Jones,  graduate  of  Amherst;  Wil- 
liam Brown  and  William  G.  Smith,  students 
of  the  medical  department,  Columbia  Col- 
lege: all  of  them  persons  of  color."  Describ- 
ing  an  annual  exhibition  of  his  school  on 
May  12,  1824,  he  quotes  from  the  Commer- 
cial  Advertiser  of  the  same  date:    "We  never 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  15 

beheld  a  white  school,  of  the  same  age  (of 
and  under  the  age  of  fifteen),  in  which,  with- 
out  exception,  there  was  more  order  and 
neatness  of  dress  and  cleanHness  of  person. 
And  the  exereises  were  performed  with  a 
degree  of  promptness  and  accuracy  which 
was  surprising." 

In  1834  the  public  school  association  took 
over  the  schools  of  the  Manumission  So- 
ciety, but  before  this  time  the  Negroes 
had  begun  to  assert  themselves  regarding 
the  method  and  place  of  instruction  for 
their  children.  They  clamored  for  colored 
teachers  and  succeeded  in  displacing  Charles 
Andrews  himself.  In  1838,  at  their  desire, 
the  Word  African  was  changed  to  colored  in 
describing  the  race;  but  of  chief  importance 
to  their  educational  future,  they  began  a 
Protest,  only  to  end  in  1900,  against  segre- 
gation. 

Removed  from  the  care  of  the  Manumis- 
sion Society,  the  colored  schools  deteriorated. 
Their  grade  was  reduced,^  and  owing  to 
the  growth  of  the  city,  their  attendance  was 

^  Thomas  Boese's  "  Public  Education  in  the  City  of  New 
York,"  p.  227. 


16  HALF  A  MAN 

very  irregulär,  the  severe  winter  weather 
often  keeping  children  who  lived  at  a  dis- 
tance  at  home.  A  Brooklyn  man  teils  me 
that,  when  a  boy,  he  used  to  walk  from  his 
home  at  East  New  York  to  Fulton  Terry, 
passing  inferior  Brooklyn  colored  sehools, 
and  after  crossing  the  river,  on  up  to  Mul- 
berry  Street  to  be  instructed  by  the  populär 
colored  teacher,  John  Peterson.  Here  he 
received  a  good  education;  but  few  boys 
would  have  endured  a  daily  trip  of  fourteen 
miles.  Increasingly  parents,  if  the  colored 
school  of  their  neighborhood  was  not  of 
the  best,  sent  their  boys  and  girls  to  be 
instructed  with  the  white  boys  and  girls  of 
their  district. 

The  State  law  declared  that  any  city  or 
incorporated  village  might  establish  sepa- 
rate sehools  for  the  instruction  of  African 
youths,  provided  the  facilities  were  equal  to 
those  of  white  sehools,  and  when,  in  1862, 
a  colored  parent  brought  a  case  against  the 
city  for  forcing  her  child  to  go  to  a  colored 
school,  the  case  was  lost.^  Nevertheless, 
during   the   nineteenth   Century   Negroes   in 

1  King  V.  Gallagher,  1882. 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  17 

some  numbers  attended  white  schools  in 
both  Brooklyn  and  New  York,  and  Negro 
parents  continued  in  their  quiet  but  persist- 
ent efforts  against  segregation.  Then  again, 
New  York  grew  too  rapidly  to  segregate 
any  race.  The  Negro  boys  and  girls  were 
scattered  through  many  districts,  and  the  at- 
tendance  at  colored  schools  feil  off;  in  1879 
it  was  less  than  in  1878,  and  in  1880  less 
than  in  1879;  so  that  the  Board  of  Educa- 
tion  in  1883  decided  to  disestablish  three 
colored  schools. 

But  this  involved  another  factor.  If  the 
colored  schools  were  disestablished,  what 
would  become  of  the  colored  teachers?  The 
Negroes  met  this  issue  by  delaying  dis- 
establishment  for  a  year,  while  the  teachers 
went  about  among  the  parents  of  the  ward, 
making  friends  and  urging  that  children, 
white  or  colored,  be  sent  to  their  schools. 
Numbers  of  new  pupils  of  both  races  were 
brought  in  within  the  year,  and  at  the  end 
of  the  time,  after  a  hearing  before  the 
governor,  then  Grover  Cleveland,  a  bill  was 
passed  prohibiting  the  abolition  of  two  of 
the  three  colored  schools,  but  also  making 


18  HALF  A  MAN 

them  open  to  all  children  regardless  of 
color.^ 

Occasionally  a  colored  girl  graduated  from 
the  normal  College  of  the  city,  but  if  there 
was  no  vacancy  for  her  in  the  four  colored 
schools  she  received  no  appointment.  In 
1896,  however,  a  normal  graduate,  Miss 
S.  E.  Frazier,  insisted  upon  her  right  to  be 
appointed  as  teacher  in  any  school  in  which 
there  was  a  vacancy.  She  visited  the  ward 
trustees  and  the  members  of  the  Board  of 
Education,  and  represented  to  them  the 
injustice  done  her  and  her  race  in  refusing 
her  the  chance  to  prove  her  ability  as  a 
teacher  in  the  first  school  that  should  need 
a  normal  graduate.  She  was  finally  ap- 
pointed to  a  Position  in  a  white  school. 
Her  success  with  her  pupils  was  immediate, 
and  since  then  the  question  of  race  or  color 
has  not  been  considered  in  the  appointment 
of  teacher s  in  New  York. 

Until  1900,  the  state  law  permitted  the 
establishment  of  separate  colored  schools. 
In  that  year,  however,  on  the  initiative 
of  Theodore  Roosevelt,  then  governor,  the 

1  A.  Emerson  Palmer,  "The  New  York  Public  School." 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  19 

legislature  passed  a  bill  providing  that  no 
person  should  be  refused  admission  or  be 
excluded  from  any  public  school  in  the  State 
on  account  of  race  or  color.^  This  closed 
tlie  question  of  compulsory  segregation  in 
the  State,  though  before  this  it  had  ceased 
in  New  York.  Public  education  was  thus 
democratized  for  the  New  York  Negroes, 
their  persistent  efforts  bringing  at  the  end 
complete  success. 

While  the  colored  people  in  New  York 
started  with  segregated  schools  and  attained 
to  mixed  schools,  the  movement  in  the 
churches  was  the  reverse.  At  first  the 
Negroes  were  attendants  of  white  churches, 
sitting  in  the  gallery  or  on  the  rear  seats, 
and  waiting  until  the  white  people  were 
through  before  partaking  of  the  communion; 
but  as  their  number  increased  they  chafed 
under  their  position.  Why  should  they  be 
placed  apart  to  hear  the  doctrine  of  Christ, 
and  why,  too,  should  they  not  have  füll 
opportunity  to  preach  that  doctrine?  The 
desire  for  self-expression  was  perhaps  the 
greatest  factor  in  leading  them  to  separate 

-  Laws  of  New  York,  Chapter  492. 


20  HALF  A  MAN 

from  the  white  church.  In  1796  about 
thirty  Negroes,  under  the  leadership  of 
James  Varick,^  withdrew  from  the  John 
Street  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  and 
formed  the  first  colored  church  of  New  York. 
Varick  had  been  denied  a  license  to  preach, 
but  now  as  pastor  of  his  own  people,  he 
was  recognized  by  the  whites  and  helped 
by  some  of  them.  He  was  the  founder 
of  the  African  Methodist  Episcopal  Zion 
Church. 

The  Abyssinian  Baptist  Church  was  organ- 
ized  in  1800  by  a  few  colored  members  who 
withdrew  from  the  First  Baptist  Church, 
then  in  Gold  Street,  to  establish  themselves 
on  Worth  Street,^  and  in  1818  the  colored 
Episcopalians  organized  St.  Philip's  Church. 
In  1820  one  of  their  race,  Peter  Williams, 
for  six  years  deacon,  became  their  preacher. 

Another  prominent  church  was  the  col- 
ored Congregational,  situated,  in  1854,  on 
Sixth  Street;  and  it  was  the  determined 
effort  of  its  woman  organist  to  reach  the 
church  in  time  to  perform  her  part  in  the 

1  B.  F.  Wheeler,  D.D.,  "The  Varick  Family." 

^  Geo.  H.  Hanseil,  "Reminiseences  of  New  York  Baptists." 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  21 

Sunday  morning  Service  that  led  to  an  im- 
portant  Negro  advance  in  citizenship. 

In  the  middle  of  the  last  Century  the  right 
of  the  Negro  to  ride  in  car  or  omnibus 
depended  on  the  sufferance  of  driver,  con- 
ductor,  and  passenger.  Sometimes  a  car 
stopped  at  a  Negro's  signal,  again  the  driver 
whipped  up  his  horses,  while  the  conductor 
yelled  to  the  "nigger"  to  wait  for  the  next 
car.  Entrance  might  always  be  effected  if 
in  the  Company  of  a  white  person,  and  the 
small  child  of  a  kindly  white  household 
would  be  delegated  to  accompany  the  home- 
ward  bound  black  visitor  into  her  car  where, 
after  a  few  minutes,  conductor  and  pas- 
sengers  having  become  accustomed  to  her 
presence,  the  young  protector  might  sHp 
away.  Such  a  Situation  was  very  gaUing 
to  the  self-respecting  negro. 

In  July,  1854,  EKzabeth  Jennings,  a  col- 
ored  school-teacher  and  organist  at  the  Con- 
gregational  Church,  attempted  to  board  a 
Third  Avenue  car  at  Pearl  and  Chatham 
Streets.  She  was  hurrying  to  reach  the 
church  to  perform  her  part  in  the  service. 
The  conductor  stopped,  but  as  Miss  Jen- 


22  HALF  A  MAN 

nings  mounted  the  platform,  he  told  her  that 
she  must  wait  for  the  next  car,  which  was 
reserved  for  her  people.  "  I  have  no  people," 
Miss  Jennings  said.  *'I  wish  to  go  to  church 
as  I  have  for  six  months  past,  and  I  do  not 
wish  to  be  detained."  The  altercation  con- 
tinued  until  the  car  behind  came  up,  and  the 
driver  there  declaring  that  he  had  less  room 
than  the  car  in  front,  the  woman  was  grudg- 
ingly  allowed  to  enter  the  car.  "Remem- 
ber,"  the  conductor  said,  "if  any  passenger 
objects,  you  shall  go  out,  whether  or  no,  or 
I'll  put  you  out." 

"I  am  a  respectable  person,  born  and 
brought  up  in  New  York,"  said  Miss  Jen- 
nings, "and  I  was  never  insulted  so  before." 

This  again  aroused  the  conductor.  "I 
was  born  in  Ireland,"  he  said,  "and  you've 
got  to  get  out  of  this  car." 

He  attempted  to  drag  her  out.  The  woman 
clung  to  the  window,  the  conductor  called 
in  the  driver  to  help  him,  and  together  they 
dragged  and  pulled  and  at  last  threw  her 
into  the  street.  Badly  hurt,  she  neverthe- 
less  jumped  back  into  the  car,  The  driver 
galloped  his  horses  down  the  street,  passing 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  23 

every  one  until  a  policeman  was  found  who 
pushed  the  woman  out,  not,  however,  until 
she  had  taken  the  number  of  the  car.  She 
then  made  her  way  home. 

Elizabeth  Jennings  took  the  case  into  court, 
and  it  came  before  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  State  in  February,  1855,  Chester  A. 
Arthur,  afterwards  President  of  the  United 
States,  being  one  of  the  lawyers  for  the 
plaintiff.  The  judge's  charge  was  clear 
on  the  point  that  common  carriers  were 
bound  to  carry  all  respectable  people,  white 
or  colored,  and  the  plaintiff  was  given  $225 
damages,  to  which  the  court  added  ten  per 
cent  and  costs;  and  to  quote  the  New  York 
Tribüne' s  comment  on  the  case,^  "Railroads, 
steamboats,  omnibuses,  and  ferryboats  will 
be  admonished  from  this  as  to  the  rights  of 
respectable  colored  people."  ^ 

When  you  talk  with  the  elderly  educated 
colored  people  of  New  York  today,  they  teil 
you  that  before  the  War  were  "dark  days." 
The   responsibility   feit   by   the   thoughtful 

^  New  York  Tribüne,  February  23,  1855. 
2  "The  Story  of  an  Old  Wrong,"  in  The  American  Woman* 8 
Journal,  July,  1895. 


24  HALF  A  MAN 

Negroes  was  very  great.  They  had  not  only 
their  own  battles  to  wage,  but  there  were 
the  fugitives  who  were  entering  the  city 
by  the  Underground  Railroad,  whom  they 
must  assist  though  it  eost  them  their  own 
liberty.  In  1835  a  Vigilance  Committee 
was  formed  in  New  York  City  to  take  charge 
of  all  escaping  slaves,  and  also  to  prevent 
the  arrest  and  return  to  slavery  of  free  men 
of  color.  Colored  men  served  on  this  Com- 
mittee, and  its  secretary  was  the  minister 
of  the  church  to  which  Elizabeth  Jennings 
was  endeavoring  to  make  her  way  that 
Sunday  morning,  the  Reverend  Charles  B. 
Ray.  In  1850  the  New  York  State  Vigi- 
lance Committee  was  formed  with  Gerritt 
Smith  as  President  and  Ray  as  Secretary. 
Ray's  home  was  frequently  used  to  shelter 
fugitives.^  Once  a  young  man,  stepping  up 
to  the  door  and  learning  that  it  was  Charles 
Ray's  house,  whistled  to  his  companions  in 
the  darkness,  and  fourteen  black  men  made 
their  appearance  and  received  shelter.  There 
would  also  come  the  task  of  negotiating  for 
the   purchase   of   a   slave,   or   this   proving 

^  Life  of  the  Reverend  Charles  B.  Ray. 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  25 

impossible,  for  the  careful  working  out  of  a 
means  for  his  escape.  Dark  days,  indeed, 
but  made  memorable  to  the  Negro  by  heroic 
work  and  the  friendship  of  great  men. 
Perhaps  the  two  races  have  never  worked 
together  in  such  fine  companionship  as  at 
the  unlawful  and  thrilHng  task  of  protect- 
ing  and  aiding  the  fugitive. 

The  hardest  year  of  the  Century  for  the 
Negro  was  1863,  when  the  draft  riot  im- 
perilled  every  dark  face.  Many  Negroes 
fled  from  the  city.  Colored  homes  were 
fired,  the  Orphan  Asylum  for  colored  chil- 
dren  on  Fifth  Avenue  was  burned,  and  even 
the  dead  might  not  be  buried  save  at  the 
peril  of  undertaker  and  priest.  Ehzabeth 
Jennings,  now  Mrs.  Graham,  lost  a  child 
when  the  rioting  was  at  its  height.  An 
undertaker  named  Winterbottom,  a  white 
man,  was  brave  enough  to  give  his  Services, 
winning  the  lasting  gratitude  and  patron- 
age  of  the  colored  people.  With  the  dan- 
ger of  violence  about  them,  the  father  and 
mother  went  to  Greenwood  Cemetery,  where 
the  Reverend  Morgan  Dix  of  Trinity  Church 
read  the  burial  service  at  the  grave. 


26  HALF  A  MAN 

With  the  end  of  the  War  and  the  passage 
of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  amendments 
came  a  revulsion  of  feeling  for  the  race. 
"I  remember,"  an  old  time  friend  of  the 
Negro  teils  me,  "when  the  fifteenth  amend- 
ment  was  passed.  The  colored  people  stood 
in  great  numbers  on  the  streets,  and  on  their 
faces  was  a  look  of  gratitude  and  thanks- 
giving  that  I  shall  never  forget."  Folio w- 
ing  the  amendment  came  the  State  Civil 
Rights  Bill  in  1873,  declaring  that  all  per- 
sons  should  be  entitled  to  füll  and  equal 
accommodations  in  all  public  places;  and 
discrimination  for  a  time  largely  ceased. 

While  the  colored  people  were  winning 
citizenship,  their  progress  in  industry  was 
also  considerable.  Until  1860  the  race  was 
infrequently  segregated,  and  black  and  white 
were  neighbors,  not  only  in  their  homes,  but 
in  business.  Samuel  R.  Scottron,  a  careful 
Negro  writer,  compiled  a  long  list  of  the 
trades  in  which  Negroes  engaged  before 
the  War.  Besides  the  various  lines  of  do- 
mestic  service,  in  which  they  were  more 
frequently  seen  than  today  —  coachmen, 
Cooks,    waitresses,    seamstresses,    barbers  — 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  27 

there  were  many  craftsmen,  ship-builders, 
trimmers,  riggers,  coopers,  caulkers,  printers, 
tailors,  carpenters.  *'Second-hand  clothing 
shops  were  everywhere  kept  by  colored  men. 
All  the  caterers  and  restaurant  keepers  of 
the  high  order,  as  well  as  small  places,  were 
kept  by  colored  men.  .  .  .  Varick  and 
Peters  kept  about  the  most  pretentious  bar- 
ber  shop  in  the  city.  Patrick  Reason  was 
one  of  the  most  capable  engravers.  The 
greatest  among  the  restaurateurs  was 
Thomas  Downing,  who  kept  a  restaurant 
under  what  is  now  the  Drexel  Building, 
Corner  of  Wall  and  Broad  Streets.  The 
drug  Stores  of  Dr.  James  McCune  Smith  on 
West  Broadway,  and  Dr.  Philip  A.  White 
on  Frankfort  Street,  were  not  outclassed  by 
any  kept  by  white  men  in  their  day."  ^ 

And  so  the  list  goes  on.  It  is  perhaps 
somewhat  exaggerated  in  the  importance 
in  the  city's  business  life  which  it  gives  to 
the  colored  race.  Charles  Andrews,  in  1837, 
says  of  the  pupil  who  graduates  from  his 
school,  "He  leaves  with  every  avenue  closed 
against  him  —  doomed  to  encounter  as  much 

^  Colored  American  Magazine,  October,  1907. 


28  HALF  A  MAN 

prejudice  and  contempt  as  if  he  were  not 
only  destitute  of  that  education  which  dis- 
tinguishes  the  civilized  from  the  savage,  but 
as  if  he  were  incapable  of  receiving  it." 
And  he  goes  on  to  teil  of  those  few  who  have 
been  able  to  learn  trades,  and  their  subse- 
quent  difficulties  in  finding  employment  in 
good  Shops.  White  journeymen  object  to 
working  in  the  same  shop  with  them,  and 
many  of  the  best  lads  go  to  sea  or  become 
waiters,  barbers,  coachmen,  servants,  la- 
borers. But  he  is  writing  of  an  early  date, 
and  the  opinion  of  the  colored  people  seems 
to  be  that,  before  our  large  foreign  immi- 
gration,  the  Negro  was  more  needed  in  New 
York  than  today  and  received  a  large  share 
of  satisfactory  employment.  His  chief  com- 
petitor  was  the  Irish  Immigrant,  like  him- 
self  an  agricultural  laborer,  without  previous 
training  in  business,  and  he  was  frequently 
able  to  hold  his  own  in  his  shop.  His  long 
experience  in  domestic  Service,  moreover, 
made  him  a  better  caterer  than  the  repre- 
sentatives  of  any  other  nationality  that  had 
yet  entered  the  city.  His  ehurches  were 
flourishing,   thus  securing  a   profession    for 


"UP  FROM  SLAVERY"  29 

which  he  had  natural  ability,  and  as  we  have 
Seen,  colored  men  and  women  taught  in  the 
New  York  schools. 

The  city  grew  rapidly  after  1875,  and  the 
colored  society,  the  little  group  that  had 
attained  to  modest  means  and  education, 
bought  homes,  chiefly  in  Brooklyn,  where 
land  was  easier  to  secure  than  in  Manhattan, 
and  strove  to  enlarge  the  opportunities  for 
those  who  were  to  come  after  them.  Color 
prejudice  had  waned,  and  they  often  met 
with  especial  consideration  because  of  their 
race.  Had  they  been  white  they  would 
have  slipped  into  the  population  and  been 
lost,  as  happened  to  the  Germans  and  the 
Irish,  who  had  been  their  competitors.  As 
it  was,  they  formed  a  society  apart  from  the 
rest  of  the  city,  meeting  it  occasionally  in 
work  or  through  the  friendship  of  children, 
who,  left  to  themselves,  know  no  race. 
They  had  battled  against  prejudice  and  had 
won  their  rights  as  Citizens. 

As  we  look  at  the  life  of  a  segregated 
people,  however,  we  see  that  we  tend  always 
to  regard  not  the  individual  but  the  group. 
The  Negro   is   a   man    in   Europe,  because 


30  HALF  A  MAN 

there  he  is  an  individual,  standing  or  fall- 
ing  by  his  own  merits.  But  in  America, 
even  in  so  cosmopolitan  a  city  as  New  York, 
he  is  judged,  not  by  his  own  achievements, 
but  by  the  achievements  of  every  other 
New  York  black  man.  So  we  will  leave 
these  able  colored  Americans,  who  won  much 
both  for  themselves  and  for  their  race,  and 
turn  to  the  mass  of  the  Negroes,  the  toiling 
poor,  who  dwell  in  our  tenements  today. 


CHAPTER  II 

Where  THE  Negro  Lives 

It  is  thirty-five  years  since,  in  his  Sym- 

phony,  Sidney  Lanier  told  of 

"The  poor 
That  stand  by  the  inward  opening  door 
Trade's  hand  doth  tighten  evermore. 
And  sigh  their  monstrous  foul  air  sigh 
For  the  outside  hüls  of  liberty." 

Were  Lanier  writing  this  today,  we  should 
wonder  whether  New  York's  crowded  tene- 
ments  had  not  served  as  inspiration  for  his 
figure.  The  island  of  Manhattan,  about 
eight  miles  long  by  two  miles  wide,  with  an 
additional  slender  triangle  of  five  miles  at 
the  north  end,  in  1905,  housed  two  million 
one  hundred  and  twelve  thousand  people. 
These  men  and  women  and  children  were  not 
scatteredLuniformly  throughout  the  island, 
but  were  placed  in  selected  corners,  one  thou- 
sand  to  the  acre,  while  a  mile  or  so  away 
large  comfortable  homes  held  families  of  two 

31 


32  HALF  A  MAN 

or  three.  This  was  Manhattan's  condition 
in  1905,  and  with  each  succeeding  year  more 
congestion  takes  place,  and  more  pressure  is 
feit  upon  the  inward  opening  door.^ 

The  Negro  with  the  rest  of  the  poor  of 
New  York  has  his  part  in  this  excessive 
overcrowding.Jf  The  slaver  in  which  he  made 
his  entrance  to  this  land  provided  in  floor 
Space  six  feet  by  one-foot-four  for  a  man, 
five  feet  by  one-foot-four  for  a  woman,  and 
four  feet  by  one-foot-four  for  a  child.^  This 
outdoes  any  overcrowding  New  York  can 
produce,  but  an  ever  increasing  cost  in  food 
and  rent  is  bringing  into  her  interior  bed- 
rooms  a  mass  of  humanity  approximating 
that  of  the  slaver's  ship.  These  new-comers, 
however,  -are  not  unwilling  occupants,  since 
unlike  the  slaves  they  may  spend  their  day 
and  much  of  their  night  amid  an  ocean  of 
changing  and  exciting  incidents.  If  you  are 
young  and  strong,  you  care  less  where  you 
sieep  than  where  you  may  spend  your 
waking  hours. 

^  Harold  M.  Finley  in  Federation,  May,  1908. 
'Thomas  Clarkson,  "History  of  the  Abolition  of  the  Slave 
Trade,"  p.  378. 


WHERE  THE  NEGRO  LIVES     33 

From  among  the  millions  of  New  York's 
poor,  can  we  pick  out  the  Negroes  in  their 
tenements?  This  is  not  so  diJÖäcult  a  task 
as  it  would  have  proved  fif ty  years  ago  when 
the  colored  were  scattered  throughout  the 
city;  today  we  find  them  confined  to  f ai^^^^^ 
definite  quarters.     A  black  face  on  the  lower 


East"Side  is  viewed  witE  astonishment,  while 
on  the  middle  West  Side  it  is  no  more 
noticeable  than  it  would  be  in  Atlanta  or 
New  Orleans.  Roughly  we  may  count  five 
Negro  neighborhoods  in  Manhattan:  Green- 
wich  Village,  the  middle  West  Side,  San 
Juan  Hill,  the  upper  East,  and  the  upper 
West  sides.  Brooklyn  has  a  large  Negro 
Population,  but  it  is  more  widely  distrib- 
uted  and  less  easily  located  than  that  of 
Manhattan. 

Of  the  five  Manhattan  neighborhoods. t.hn  ^_ 
oldest  is  Green  wich  Village^  according  to 
Janvier  once  the  most  attractive  part  of 
New  York,  where  the  streets  "have  a  ten- 
dency  to  sidle  away  from  each  other  and  to 
take  sudden  and  unreasonable  turns."  Here 
one  finds  such  fascinating  names  as  Minetta 
Lane   and    Carmine   and    Cornelia   Streets. 


34  HALF  A  MAN 

These  and  neighboring  thoroughfares  grow 
daily  more  grimy,  however,  and  no  longer 
merit  Janvier's  praise  for  cleanliness,  moral 
and  physical.  The  picturesque,  friendly  old 
houses  are  giving  way  to  factories  with  high, 
monotonous  fronts,  where  foreigners  work 
who  crowd  the  ward  and  destroy  its  former 
American  aspect. 

Among  the  old  time  aristocracy  bearing 
Knickerbocker  names  there  are  a  few  colored 
people  who  delight  in  talking  of  the  fine 
families  and  past  wealth  of  old  Greenwich 
Village.  Scornful  of  the  gibberish-speaking 
Italians,  they  sigh,  too,  at  their  own  race  as 
they  see  it,  for  the  ambitious  Negro  has 
moved  uptown,  leaving  this  section  largely 
to  widowed  and  deserted  women  and  degen- 
erates.  The  once  handsome  houses,  altered 
to  accommodate  many  families,  are  rotten 
and  unwholesome,  while  the  newer  tenements 
of  West  Third  Street  are  darkened  by  the 
elevated  road,  and  shelter  vice  that  knows 
no  race.  Altogether,  this  is  not  a  neighbor- 
hood  to  attract  the  new-comer.  Here  alone 
in  New  York  I  have  found  the  majority  of 
the  adults  northern  born,  men  and  women 


WHERE  THE  NEGRO  LIVES     35 


who,  unsuccessful  in  their  struggle  with  city 
life,  have  been  left  behind  in  these  old  for- 
gotten  streets.^ 

The  second  section,  north  of  the  first,  Hes 
between  West  Fourteenth  and  West  Fifty- 
ninth  Streets,  and  Sixth  Avenue  and  the 
HudsoiTRiver.^  Th  p8Ö  thj&jwa ,s  the  ren Ire 
of  the~Negro  population,  but  business  has 
entered  some  of  the  streets,  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad  has  scooped  out  acres  for  its 
terminal,  and  while  the  eolored  houses  do 

1  Place  of  birth  of  1036  New  York  Negro  tenement  d wellers. 
These  figures  were  obtained  chiefly  from  personal  visits: 


Totais 


New  England    

West 

New  York 

New  Jersey 

Pennsylvania 

Maryland 

District  of  Columbia 

Virginia 

Carolinas 

Gulf  States    

Canada  

West  Indies     

Europa 


18 
11 

157 
18 
19 
37 
26 

375 

217 

65 

2 

87 

4^ 

1036 


East 
Side 


1 

1 
6 
1 
0 
1 
0 
8 
6 
0 
0 
1 
0 
25 


Green- 

wich 

Village 


4 

0 
47 

4 

3 

0 

1 
15 
16 

2 

1 

6 

1 
100 


Middle 
West 

Side 


7 

5 
42 

3 

3 

6 

5 
71 
64 
23 

1 
13 

0 
243 


San 
Juaa 
HiU 


5 

4 

55 

9 

12 

27 

16 

244 

127 

39 

0 

67 

3 


Upper 
West 
Side 


1 
1 
7 
1 
1 
3 
4 

37 
4 
1 
0 
0 
0 

60 


36  HALF  A  MAN 

not  diminish  in  number,  they  show  no  de- 
cided  increase.  No  one  street  is  given  over 
to  the  Negro,  but  a  row  of  two  or  three  or 
six  or  even  eight  tenements  shelter  the  black 
man.  The  shelter  afforded  is  poorer  than 
that  given  the  white  resident  whose  dwelhng 
touches  the  black,  the  rents  are  a  little 
higher,  and  the  landlord  fails  to  pay  atten- 
tion to  ragged  paper,  or  to  a  ceiling  which 
scatters  plaster  flakes  upon  the  floor.  In 
the  Thirties  there  are  rear  tenements  reached 
by  narrow  alley-ways.  Crimes  are  com- 
mitted  by  black  neighbor  against  black 
neighbor,  and  the  entrance  to  the  rear  yard 
offers  a  tempting  place  for  a  girl  to  linger  at 
night.  A  rear  tenement  is  New  York's  only 
approach  to  the  alley  of  cities  farther  south. 
There  are  startling  and  happy  surprises  in 
all  tenement  neighborhoods,  and  I  recall 
turning  one  afternoon  from  a  dark  yard 
into  a  large  beautiful  room.  Muslin  cur- 
tains  concealed  the  Windows,  the  brass  bed 
was  covered  with  a  thick  white  counterpane, 
and  on  either  side  of  the  fireplace,  where 
coal  burned  brightly  in  an  open  grate,  were 
two  rare  engravings.     It  was  a  workroom. 


WHERE  THE  NEGRO  LIVES    37 

and  the  mistress  of  the  house,  steady,  capable, 
and  very  black,  was  at  her  ironing-board. 
By  her  sat  the  colored  mammy  of  the  story 
book  rocking  lazily  in  her  chair.  She  ex- 
plained  to  me  that  her  daughter  had  found 
her  down  south,  two  years  ago,  and  brought 
her  to  this  northern  home,  where  she  had 
nothing  to  do,  for  her  daughter  could  make 
fifty  dollars  a  month.  This  home  picture 
was  made  lastingly  memorable  by  the  younger 
woman's  telHng  me  softly  as  she  went  with 
me  to  the  door,  "I  was  sold  from  my  mother, 
down  in  Georgia,  when  I  was  two  years  old. 
I  ain't  sure  she's  my  mother.  She  thinks  so; 
but  I  can't  ever  be  sure." 

Homes  beautiful  both  in  appearance  and 
in  spirit  can  rarely  occur  where  people  must 
dwell  in  great  poverty,  but  there  are  many 
efforts  at  attractive  family  Hfe  on  these 
streets.  A  few  of  the  blocks  are  orderly 
and  quiet.  Thirty-seventh  Street,  between 
Eighth  and  Ninth  Avenues,  is  largely  given 
over  to  the  colored  and  is  rough  and  noisy. 
Here  and  down  by  the  river  at  Hell's  Kitchen 
the  rioting  in  1900  between  the  Irish  and  the 
Negro   took   place.     Men   are   ready   for   a 


38  HALF  A  MAN 

fight  today,  and  the  children  see  much  of 
hard  drinking  and  quick  blows. 

"The  poorer  the  family,  the  lower  is  the 
quarter  in  which  it  must  Hve,  and  the  more 
enviable  appears  the  fortune  of  the  anti- 
social class."  ^  A  vicious  world  dwells  in 
these  streets  and  makes  notorious  this  section 
of  New  York.  For  this  is  a  part  of  the 
Tenderloin  district,  and  at  night,  after  the 
children's  cries  have  ceased,  and  the  fathers 
and  mothers  who  have  worked  hard  during 
the  day  have  put  out  their  hghts,  the  auto- 
mobiles rush  swiftly  past,  bearing  the  men 
of  the  "  super ior  race."  Temptation  is  con- 
tinuous,  and  the  child  that  grows  up  pure 
in  thought  and  deed  does  so  in  spite  of  his 
surroundings. 

Before  reaching  West  Fifty-ninth  Street, 
the  beginning  of  our  third  district,  we  come 
upon  a  Negro  block  at  West  Fifty-third 
Street.  When  years  ago  the  elevated  rail- 
road  was  erected  on  this  fashionable  street, 
white  people  began  to  seil  out  and  rent  to 
Negroes;  and  today  you  find  here  three 
colored  hoteis,  the  colored  Young  Men's  and 

^  S.  N.  Patten,  "New  Basis  of  Civilization,"  p.  52. 


WHERE  THE  NEGRO  LIVES     39 

Young  Women's  Christian  Associations,  the 
Offices  of  many  colored  doctors  and  lawyers, 
and  three  large  beautiful  colored  churches. 
The  din  of  the  elevated  drowns  alike  the 
doctor's  voice  and  his  patient's,  the  client's 
and  the  preacher's. 

From  Fifty-ninth  Street,  Walking  north  on 
Tenth  Avenue,  we  begin  to  ascend  a  hill 
that  grows  in  steepness  until  we  reach  Sixty- 
second  Street.  The  avenue  is  lined  with 
small  Stores  kept  by  Italians  and  Germans, 
but  to  the  left  the  streets,  sloping  rapidly  to 
the  Hudson  River,  are  filled  with  tenements, 
huge  double  deckers,  built  to  within  ten  feet 
of  the  rear  of  the  twenty-five  foot  lot,  accom- 
modating  four  families  on  each  of  the  five 
floors.  We  can  count  four  hundred  and 
seventy-nine  homes  on  one  side  of  the  street 
alone ! 

This  is  mir  tjjirrl  rli«triVf,  Sp"  Juan  TJÜI ,  gn 

men  charging  up  during.one  „of  the  once 
common  race  fights.  It  is  a  bit  of  Africa,  as 
Negroid  in  aspect  as  any  district  you  are 
likely  to  visit  in  the  South.  A  large  ma- 
jorii^of_its_residents  are  Southerners  and 


40  HALF  A  MAN 

West  Indians,  and  it  presents  an  interesting 
study  of  the  Negro  poor  in  a  large  northern 
city.  The  block  on  Sixtieth  Street  has  some 
white  residents,  but  the  blocks  on  Sixty- 
first,  Sixty-second,  and  Sixty-third  are  given 
over  entirely  to  colored.  On  the  square 
made  by  the  north  side  of  Sixty-first,  the 
south  side  of  Sixty-second  Streets,  and  Tenth 
and  West  End  Avenues,  5.4  acres,  the  state 
census  of  1905  showed  6173  inhabitants.^ 
All  but  a  few  of  these  must  have  been  Ne- 
groes,  as  the  avenue  sides  of  the  block,  occu- 
pied  by  whites,  are  short  and  with  low  houses. 
It  is  the  long  line  of  five-story  tenements, 
running  eight  hundred  feet  down  the  two 
streets,  that  brings  up  the  enumeration. 
The  dwellings  on  Sixty-first  and  Sixty-second 
Streets  are  human  hives,  honeycombed  with 
little  rooms  thick  with  human  beings.  Bed- 
rooms  open  into  air  shafts  that  admit  no 

1  Some  doubt  is  cast  upon  this  figure.  The  New  York 
Health  Department  in  an  enumeration  of  its  own,  in  1905, 
found  a  population  of  3833.  There  is  no  question,  however, 
of  the  great  congestion  of  this  block  and  the  one  north  and 
south  of  it.  The  erection  of  new  tenements  has  gone  on 
rapidly  since  1905,  sweeping  away  the  children's  playgrounds, 
and  making  this  one  of  the  most  crowded  centres  of  New 
York. 


WHERE  THE  NEGRO  LIVES     41 

fresh  breezes,  only  foul  air  carry ing  too  often 
the  germs  of  disease. 

The  people  on  the  hill  are  known  for  their 
rougTTBetiaviorTtheir  readiness  to  fight,  their 
coarse  talk.  Vice  is  abroad,  not  in  insidious 
form  as  in  the^Sore  well-to-do  neighborhood 
farther  north,  but  open  and  cheap.  Boys 
play  at  craps  unmolested,  gambling  is  preva- 
lent,  and  Negro  loafers  hang  about  the  street 
Corners  and  largely  support  the  Tenth  Avenue 
saloons. 

But  San  Juan -HiU.hasmany  respectable 
families,  and  within  the  past  five  years  it  has 
taken  a  decided  turn  for  the  better.  The 
improvement  has  been  chiefly  upon  Sixty- 
third_Street  where  two  model  tenements,  one  o^^  ^  • 
holding  one  hundred,  the  other  one  hundred 
and  sixty-one  famihes,  have  been  opened 
under  the  management  of  the  City  and 
Suburban  Homes  Company,  the  larger  one 
having  been  erected  by  Mr.  Henry  Phipps. 
Planning  for  a  four  per  cent  return  on  their 
Investment,  these  landlords  have  rented  only 
to  respectable  families,  and  their  rule  has 
changed  the  character  of  the  block.^     Old 

^  Too  much  cannot  be  said  of  the  beneficial  effect  of  good 


42  HALF  A  MAN 

houses  have  been  remodelled  to  compete  with 
the  newer  dwellings,  street  rows  have  ceased, 
and  the  poHce  captain  of  the  district,  we  are 
told,  now  counts  this  as  one  of  the  peaceful 
and  law-abiding  blocks  of  the  city.  When 
its  other  blocks  show  a  hke  improvement, 
San  Juan  Hill  will  no  longer  merit  its  bel- 
ligerent  name. 

The  lower  East  Side  of  Manhattan,  a  many- 
storied  mass  of  tenem^inTsIän^ 
where  immigrants  labor  and  sleep  in  their 
tiny  crowded  rooms,  was  once  a  fashionable 
American  district.  At  that  time  Negroes 
dwelt  near  the  whites  as^  Färbers,  caterers, 
and  cöäHimen7~äs  laundresses  and  wai ting- 
maids.  But  with  the  removal  of  the  people 
whom   they   served,    the   colored   men   and 

housing  in  a  colored  neighborhood,  when  under  such  able 
management  as  the  City  and  Suburban  Homes  Company. 
Decent  homes  under  competent  management  are  absolutely 
necessary  to  an  improvement  in  the  Negro  quarters  of  Man- 
hattan and  of  Brooklyn  as  well.  I  can  speak  with  some 
authority  of  the  good  done  by  the  Phipps  houses  on  West 
Sixty-third  Street,  as  I  lived,  for  eight  months,  the  only  white 
tenant  in  the  one  hundred  and  sixty-one  apartments.  Church 
and  philanthropy  had  done  and  are  doing  excellent  work  on 
these  blocks,  but  a  sudden  and  marked  improvement  came 
from  good  housing,  frora  the  building  of  clean,  healthful 
homes  for  law-abiding  people. 


WHERE  THE  NEGRO  LIVES     43 

women  left  also,  and  it  is  difficult  to  find  an 
African  face  among  the  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands  of  Europeans  south  of  Fourteenth 
Street.  On  Pell  Street,  in  the  Chinese  quar- 
ter, there  used  to  be  two  colored  families  on 
friendly  terms  with  their  neighbors,  who, 
however,  went  uptown  for  their  pleasures 
and  their  church. 

It  is  not  until  we  reach  Third  Avenue  and 
Forty-third  Street  that  we  come  to  jhe  Easi 
Side  Negro  tenement.  From  this  point, 
sucE  houses  run,  a  straggling  line,  chiefly 
between  Second  and  Third  Avenues,  to  the 
Bronxwhere  the  more  well-to-do  among  the 
colored  live.  At  Ninety-seventh  Street,  and 
on  up  to  One  Hundredth  Street,  dark  faces 
are  numerous.  About  six  hundred  and  fifty 
Negro  families  live  on  these  four  streets  and 
around  the  corner  on  Third  Avenue.  Occa- 
sionally  they  live  in  houses  occupied  by 
Je  WS  or  Italians.  Above  this  section  there 
are  a  number  of  Negro  tenements  in  the  One 
Hundred  and  Thirties,  between  Madison 
and  Fifth  Avenues  —  almost  a  West  Side 
neighborhood,  since  it  adjoins  the  large 
colored  quarter  to  the  west  of  Fifth  Avenue. 


44  HALF  A  MAN 

On  the  whole,  the  East  Side  is  not  often 
sought  by  the  colored  as  a  place  of  residence. 
Their  important  churches  are  in  another  part 
of  the  city,  and  every  New  Yorker  knows  the 
difficulty  in  making  a  way  across  Central 
Park.  Yet,  the  neighborhood  is  not  uncivil 
to  them,  and  one  rarely  reads  here  of  race 
friction.  Doubtless  this  is  in  part  owing  to 
the  smallness  of  the  population,  all  of  Man- 
hattan east  of  Fifth  Avenue  containing  but 
fourteen  per  cent  of  the  apartments  oecupied 
by  colored  in  the  city;  but  it  is  partly,  too, 
that  Jews  and  Italians  prove  less  belligerent 
tenement  neighbors  than  Irish. 

Five  years  ago,  those  of  us  who  were  inter- 
ested  in  the  Negro  poor  continually  heard  of 
their  diflSculty  in  securing  a  place  to  live. 
Not  only  were  they  unable  to  rent  in  neigh- 
borhoods  suitable  for  respectable  men  and 
women,  but  dispossession,  caused  perhaps  by 
the  inroad  of  business,  meant  a  despairing 
hunt  for  any  home  at  all.  People  clung  to 
miserable  dwellings,  where  no  improvements 
had  been  made  for  years,  thankful  to  have  a 
roof  to  shelter  them.  Yet  all  the  time  new- 
law  tenements  were  being  built,  and  Gentile 


WHERE  THE  NEGRO  LIVES     45 

and  Jew  were  leaving  their  former  apartments 
in  haste  to  get  into  these  more  attractive 
dwellings.  iVt  length  the  Negro  got  his 
chance;  not  a  very  good  one,  but  something 
better  than  New  York  had  yet  offered  him 
—  a  chance  to  follow  into  the  houses  left 
vacant  by  the  white  tenants.  Owing  in  part 
to  the  energy  of  Negro  real  estate  agents,  in 
part  to  rapid  building  Operations,  desirable 
streets,  near  the  subway  and  the  elevated 
railroad,  were  thrown  open  to  the  colored. 
This  Negro  quarter,  the  last  we  have  to  note 
and  the  newest,  has  been  created  in  the  past 
eight  years.  When  the  Tenement  House 
Department  tabulated  the  1900  census  fig- 
ures  for  the  Borough  of  Manhattan,  and 
showed  the  nationalities  and  races  on  each 
block,  it  found  only  300  colored  f amilies  in 
a  neighborhood  that  today  accommodates 
4473  colored  famihes.^  This  large  increase 
is  on  six  streets,  West  Ninety-ninth,  between 
Eighth  and  Ninth  Avenues,  West  One  Hun- 
dred and  Nineteenth,  between  Seventh  and 
Eighth  Avenues,  and  West  One  Hundred  and 

^  The  Tenement  House  Department  tabulated  the  number 
of  Negro  families  living  in  tenements  on  these  streets.  I  have 
counted  the  number  of  flats  rented  to  colored  people. 


46  HALF  A  MAN 

Thirty-third  to  One  Hundred  and  Thirty- 
sixth  Streets,  between  Fifth  and  Seventh 
Avenues,  with  a  few  houses  between  Seventh 
and  Eighth,  and  on  Lenox  Avenues.  There 
are  colored  tenements  north  and  south  of 
this;  and  while  these  figures  are  correct 
today,^  they  may  be  wrong  tomorrow,  for 
new  tenements  are  continually  given  over  to 
the  Negro  people.  Moreover,  on  all  of  these 
streets  are  colored  boarding  and  lodging 
houses,  erowded  with  humanity.  Houses 
today  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Negro  as  a 
child's  blocks,  plaeed  on  end,  tumble  when 
a  push  is  given  to  the  first  in  the  line.  The 
New  York  Times,  in  August,  1905,  gives  a 
graphic  account  of  the  entrance  of  the 
colored  tenant  on  West  Ninety-ninth  Street. 
Two  houses  had  been  opened  for  a  short  time 
to  Negroes  when  the  other  house-owners 
capitulated,  and  the  colored  influx  came: 
"The  Street  was  so  choked  with  vehicles 
Saturday  that  some  of  the  drivers  had  to 
wait  with  their  teams  around  the  corners  for 
an  opportunity  to  get  into  it.  A  constant 
stream  of  furniture  trucks  loaded  with  the 

1  July  15,  1910. 


WHERE  THE  NEGRO  LIVES     47 

household  effects  of  a  new  colony  of  colored 
people  who  are  invading  the  choice  locality 
is  pouring  into  the  street.  Another  equally 
long  procession,  moving  in  the  other  direc- 
tion,  is  carrying  away  the  household  goods 
of  the  whites  from  their  homes  of  years." 
The  movement  is  not  always  so  swift  as  this, 
but  it  is  continuous. 

This  last  colored  neighborhood  perhaps 
ought  not  to  be  spoken  of  as  belonging  to  the 
poor;  not  to  Lanier's  poor  whose  door  pressed 
so  tightenin^ly  inVard.  Here  are  homes 
where  it  is  po^sible,  with  sufficient  money, 
to  live  in  privacy,  and  with  the  comforts  of 
steam  heat  and  a  private  bath.  But  rents 
are  high,  and  if  money  is  scarce,  the  apart- 
ment  must  be  crowded  and  privacy  lost. 
Moreover,  vice  has  made  its  way  into  these 
newly  acquired  streets.  The  sporting  class 
will  always  pay  more  and  demand  fewer 
improvements  than  the  workers,  and,  unable 
to  Protect  himself,  the  respectable  tenant 
finds  his  children  forced  to  live  in  close 
propinquity  to  viciousness.  Each  of  these 
new  streets  has  this  objectionable  dement  in 
its  Population,  for  while  some  agents  make 


48  HALF  A  MAN 

earnest  efforts  to  keep  the  property  they 
handle  respectable,  they  find  the  owner  wants 
money  more  than  respectabihty. 

In  our  walk  up  and  down  Manhattan, 
turning  aside  and  searching  for  Negro- 
tenanted  streets,  we  ought  to  see  one  thing 
with  clearness  —  that  the  majjority  of  the 
colored  population  hve  on  a  comparatively 
few^^Tocks^  This  IS  a  new  and  imp^rtant 
feature  of  their  New  York  hfe,  and  in  certain 
parts  of  the  city  it  develops  a  color  problem, 
for  while  you  seem  an  inappreciable  ^jjitity^ 
when  you  constitute  two  per  cent  of  the 
population  in  the  borough,  you  are  of  impor- 
tance  when  you  form  oneliundre^  per  cent 
of  the  population  of  your  street.  This  con- 
gestion  is  accompanied  by  a  segregation  of 
the  race.  The  dwellers  in  these  tenements 
are  largely  new-eomers,  men  and  women 
from  the  South  and  the  West  Indies,^  seek- 
ing  the  North  for  greater  freedom  and 
for  economic  opportunity.     Like  any  other 

*  The  yearly  arrivals  of  "  African  blacks "  at  the  port  of 
New  York,  secured  from  the  Immigration  Commissioner, 
are  as  follows:  1902-03,  110;  1903-04,  547;  1904-05,  1189; 
1905-06,  1757;  1906-07,  2054;  1907-08,  1820;  1908-09, 
2119.    The  year  runs  from  July  1  to  June  30. 


WHERE  THE  NEGRO  LIVES     49 

strangers  they  are  glad  to  make  their  home 
among  familiär  faces,  and  they  settle  in  the 
already  crowded  places  on  the  West  Side. 
Freedom  to  hve  on  the  East  Side  next  door 
to  a  Bohemian  family  may  be  very  well,  but 
sociability  is  better.  The  housewife  who  tim- 
idly  hangs  her  clothes  on  the  roof  her  first 
Monday  morning  in  New  York  is  pleased 
to  find  the  next  line  swinging  with  the  laun- 
dry  of  a  Richmond  acquaintance,  who  in- 
structs  her  in  the  perplexing  housekeeping 
devices  of  her  flat.  No  chattering  foreigner 
could  do  that.  And  while  to  be  welcome  in 
a  white  church  is  inspiring,  to  find  the  girl 
you  knew  at  home,  in  the  next  pew  to  you,  is 
still  more  delightful  when  you  have  arrived, 
tired  and  homesick,  at  the  great  eity  of  New 
York.  So  the  colored  working  people,  like 
the  Italians  and  Jews  and  other  nationalities, 
have  their  quarter  in  which  they  live  very 
much  by  themselves,  paying  little  attention 
to  their  white  neighbors.  If  the  white 
people  of  the  city  have  forced  this  upon 
them,  they  have  easily  accepted  it.  Should 
this  two  per  cent  of  the  population  be  com- 
pelled    to    distribute    itself    mathematically 


50 


HALF  A  MAN 


v'^^ 


.^- 


]y^ 


over  the  city,  each  ward  and  street  having  its 
correct  quota,  it  would  evince  dissatisfac- 
tion.  This  is  not  true  of  the  well-to-do 
dement,  but  of  the  mass  of  the  Negro 
workers  whose  homes  we  have  been  visiting. 
Loving  soeiabiHty,  these  new-comers  to  the 
city  —  and  it  is  in  the  most  segregated  dis- 
tricts  that  the  greater  number  of  southern 
and  British  born  Negroes  are  found  —  keep 
to  their  own  street s  and  Hve  to  themselves. 
If  they  occupy  all  the  sidewalk  as  they  talk 
over  important  matters  in  front  of  their 
ehurch,  the  Outsider  passing  should  recognize 
that  he  is  an  intruder  and  take  to  the  curb. 
He  would  leave  the  sidewalk  entirely  were 
he  on  Hester  Street  or  Mulberry  Bend. 
New-comers  to  New  York  usually  segregate, 
and  the  Negro  is  no  exception. 

While  congestion  and  segregation  seem 
important  to  us  as  we  look  at  these  colored 
quarters,  I  suspect  that  the  matter  most 
pertinent  to  the  Negro  new-comer  is,  not 
where  he  will  live  nor  how  he  willlive,  but 
whether  jie  will  be  able  to  live  ijn_New_York 
at"*  all,  whether  he  can  meet  the  landlord's 
agent  the  day  he  comes  to  the  door.     For 


WHERE  THE  NEGRO  LIVES     51 

New  York  rents  have  mounted  upwards  as 

haye her    ten^^^nts.     The    Phipps    model 

houses,  built  especially  to  benefit  the  poor, 
Charge  twenty-five  dollars  a  month  for  four 
tiny  rooms  and  bath;  and  while  this  is  a 
little  raore  than  the  dark  old  time  rooms 
would  bring,  it  takes  about  all  of  the  twenty- 
five  dollars  you  make  running  an  elevator,  to 
get  a  flat  in  New  York.  What  wonder  that, 
once  secured^  it  is  OYjerrun.  Jwi^ 
that,  if  privacy  is  maintained,  therejs^^not  '^/^''^ 
enough  money  left  to  feed  and  clothe  the 
grpwing  household.  The  once  familiär  song 
of  the  colored  comedian  still  rings  true  in 
New  York: 


Ruf  US  Rastus  Johnson  Brown, 

What  you  gwine  ter  do  when  de  rent  comes  roun'?' 


1 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Child  of  the  Tenement 

WiTHiN  the  last  few  years  white  Ameri- 
cans,  many  of  whom  were  formerly  Ignorant 
of  their  condition,  have  been  taught  that 
they  are  possessed  of  a  racial  antipathy  for 
human  beings  whose  color  is  not  their  own. 
They  have  a  "natural  contrariety,"  **a  dis- 
like  that  seems  constitutional "  toward  the 
dark  tint  that  they  see  on  another's  face. 
But  however  well  they  may  have  conned 
their  lesson,  it  breaks  down  or  is  likely  to  be 
forgotten  in  the  presence  of  a  Negro  baby; 
for  a  healthy  colored  baby  is  a  subjeet,  not 
for  natural  contrariety,  but  for  sympathetic 
cuddling.  They  are  most  engaging  new- 
comers,  these  "delicate  bronze  statuettes,"  ^ 
only  warm  with  life,  and  smiling  good  will 
upon  their  world. 

Not  many  colored  babies  are  born  in  New 
York,  at  least  not  enough  to  keep  pace  with 

*  Dudley  Kidd's,  "Sa vage  Childhood/'  a  delightful  book. 
52 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     53 

the  deaths.  The  year  1908  saw  in  all  the 
boroughs  1973  births  as  against  2212  deaths 
at  all  ages.i 

In  this  same  year  the  colored  births  for 
Manhattan  and  the  Bronx  were  1459,  and 
the  deaths  under  one  year  of  age  424,  an 
infant  mortality  rate  of  290  to  every  thou- 
sand.2  That  is,  two  babies  in  every  seven 
died  under  one  year  of  age.  The  white 
infant  mortality  rate  was  127.7,  a  little  less 
than  half  that  of  the  colored. 

Why  should  we  have  in  New  York  this 
enormous  colored  infant  death  rate  ?  Many 
physicians  believe  it  indicates  a  lack  of 
physical  stamina  in  the  Negro,  an  inability 
to  resist  disease.  This  may  be  so,  but  before 
falling  back  upon  race  as  an  explanation  of 
high  infant  mortality,  we  need  to  exhaust 
other  possible  eauses.  We  do  not  question 
the  vitality  of  the  white  race  when  we  read 

*  Report  of  the  Department  of  Health,  City  of  New  York, 
1908,  pp.  844,  849.  The  returns  for  births,  the  report  states, 
are  incomplete. 

^  This  per  cent  is  obtained  f rom  two  sources,  the  births  from 
the  Department  of  Health  report,  and  the  deaths  from  the 
Mortality  Statistics  of  the  United  States  Census,  1908. 
"Colored"  includes  Chinese,  a  negligible  quantity  in  the  infant 
Population. 


54  HALF  A  MAN 

that  in  parts  of  Russia  500  babies  out  of 
every  thousand  die  within  the  year;  nor  do 
we  believe  the  people  of  Fall  River,  a  fac- 
tory  town  in  Massachusetts,  have  an  inher- 
ent  inability  to  resist  disease,  though  their 
infant  mortality  rate  in  1900  was  260  in 
one  thousand  births.  We  look  in  these 
latter  cases,  as  we  should  in  the  former,  to 
see  if  we  find  those  conditions  which  careful 
students  of  the  subject  teil  us  accompany 
a  high  infant  death  rate. 

Among  the  first  of  the  accepted  causes 
of  Infant  mortality  is  the  overcrowding_of^ 
cities.  We  have  viewed  overcrowding  as 
a  usual  condition  among  the  Negroes  of 
New  York,  and  have  seen  the  small,  ill- 
ventilated  bedroom  where  the  baby  spends 
much  of  its  life.  Heat,  with  its  accompany- 
ing  growth  of  Eiacteria  and  swift  process 
of  decomposition,  is  a  second  cause.  New 
York's  high  infant  mortality  comes  in  the 
summer  months  when  in  the  poorest  quar- 
ters it  Eas  ^en  known  to  reach  f our  hundred 
in    the    thousand.^     In    the    hot,    crowded 

1  Third  Annual  Report  of  the  New  York  Milk  Committee, 
1909. 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     55 

tenements,  and  no  place  can  be  so  hot  as 
New  York  in  one  of  its  July  record-break- 
ing  weeks,  the  babies  die  like  flies,  and  yet 
not  like  flies,  for  the  flies  buzz  in  hundreds 
about  the  little  hot  faces.  Excitement, 
late  hours,  constant  restlessness,  these,  too, 
cause  infant  mortality.  On  a  city  block 
tenanted  by  hundreds  of  men  and  women 
and  little  children,  no  hour  of  the  night  is 
free  from  some  disturbance.  Children  whim- 
per  as  they  wake  from  the  heat,  babies  cry 
shrilly,  and  the  brightly-lighted  streets  are 
rarely  without  the  sound  of  human  foot- 
steps.  The  sensitive  new-born  organism 
knows  nothing  of  the  quiet  and  restful  dark- 
ness  of  nature's  night. 

But  the  most  important  cause  of  infant 
mortality  ^  is  improper  infant  feeding.  And 
here  we  meet  with  a  condition  that  confronts 
the  Negro  babies  of  New  York  far  more 
than  it  confronts  the  white.  For  a  properly 
fed  baby  is  a  breast  fed  baby,  or  eise  one 
whose  food  has  been  prepared  with  great 
care,  and  mothers  forced  by  necessity  to  go 

^  See  G.  Newman,  "  Infant  Mortality,"  for  a  carefxd  study 
of  this  whole  subject. 


^^ 


56  HALF  A  MAN 

out  to  work,  cannot  themselves  give  their 
babies  this  proper  food.  It  is  among  the 
infants  of  mothers  at  work  that  mortality  is 
high.  Mr.  G.  Newman,  an  Enghsh  author- 
ity  on  this^ubject,  gives  an  interesting  ex- 
ample  of  this  in  Lancashire,  where,  during 
the  American  civil  war,  many  of  the  cot- 
ton  operatives  were  out  of  employment  and 
many  more  worked  only  half  time.  Priva- 
tion was  great.  A  quarter  of  the  mill  hands 
were  in  receipt  of  poor  relief,  the  general 
death  rate  increased,  but  the  infant  mortality 
rate  decreased.  The  mothers,  forced  by  cir- 
cumstances  to  remain  away  from  the  fac- 
tory,  though  in  a  state  of  semi-starvation,  by 
their  nursing  and  by  their  care  of  the  home 
preserved  the  lives  of  their  infants.  Negro 
mothers,  owing  to  the  low  wage  earned  by 
their  husbands,  for  the  general  welfare  of  the 
family  and  to  avoid  semi-starvation,  like  the 
Lancashire  women,  leave  their  homes,  but 
they  thereby  sacrifice  the  lives  of  many  of 
their  babies.  The  percentage  for  1900  of 
Negro  married  women  in  New  York  engag- 
^^^  ing  in  self-supporting  work  was  31.4  in  every 
0^"^     hundred;    of  white  married   women  4.2  in 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     57 

every  hundred,  seven  times  as  many  in  Pro- 
portion among  the  Negroes  as  among  the 
whites.i  The  Negro  also  shows  a  large  per- 
centage  of  widows,  a  quarter  of  all  the  female 
Population  over  ten  years  of  age.  Some  of 
these,  we  have  no  means  of  knowing  how 
many,  are  widows  only  in  name,  and  have 
babies  for  whom  they  must  in  some  way  pro- 
vide  Support.  The  colored  mother  who  has 
no  husband  often  takes  a  position  in  domestic 
Service  and  boards  her  baby,  paying  usually 
by  the  month,  and  finding  the  opportunity 
to  visit  her  infant  perhaps  once  a  week. 
Sometimes  she  secures  a  "baby  tender"  who 
can  give  kindly,  intelligent  care;  but  under 
the  best  conditions  her  child  will  be  bottle 
fed  and  in  tenement  surroundings  inimical 
to  health,  while  sometimes  the  woman  to 
whom  she  intrusts  her  infant  will  be  igno- 
rant  of  the  simplest  matters  of  hygiene. 

I  remember  an  old  colored  woman,  she 
must  be  dead  by  this  time,  who  kept  a  baby 
farm.  Her  health  was  poor,  and  when  I 
saw  her,  she  had  taken  to  her  bed  and  lay 

1  Census,  1900,  combination  of  Population  table  and 
Women  at  Work. 


58  HALF  A  MAN 

in  a  dark  room  with  two  infants  at  her  side. 
They  were  indescribably  puny,  with  sunken 
cheeks  and  skinny  arms  and  hands,  weigh- 
ing  what  a  normal  child  should  weigh  at 
birth,  and  yet  six  and  seven  months  old. 
The  woman  talked  to  me  enthusiastically 
of  salvation  and  gave  filthy  bottles  to  her 
charges.  She  was  exceptionally  incompe- 
tent,  but  there  are  others  doing  her  work, 
too  old  or  too  ignorant  properly  to  attend 
to  the  babies  under  their  care. 

Mothers  who  go  out  to  day's-work  are 
also  unable  to  nurse  their  babies  or  to  pre- 
pare  all  their  food.  The  infant  is  placed 
in  the  care  of  some  neighbor  or  of  a  growing 
daughter,  who  may  be  the  impatient  "little 
mother"  of  a  number  of  charges.  When  the 
hot  Summer  comes,  such  a  baby  is  likely  to 
fall  the  victim  of  epidemic  diarrhoea,  caused 
by  pollution  of  the  milk.  Newman  has  a 
striking  chart  of  infant  death  rates  in  Paris 
in  which  he  pictures  a  rate  mounting  in 
one  week  as  high  as  256  in  the  thousand 
among  the  artificially  fed  infants,  while  for 
the  same  week,  among  the  breast  fed  babies, 
the  mortality  is  32.     The   Negro    mother. 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     59 

seeking  self-support  by  keeping  clean  an- 
other's  house  or  caring  for  another's  chil- 
dren,  finds  her  own  offspring  swiftly  taken 
from  her  by  a  disease  that  only  her  nourish- 
ing  care  could  forestall.^ 

Remedial  measures  have  for  some  time 
been  taken  in  New  York  to  check  infant 
mortaHty,  and  they  have  met  with  some 
success.  The  distribution  of  pasteurized 
milk  by  Mr.  Nathan  Straus,  the  establish- 
ment  of  milk  stations  during  the  summer 
months  in  New  York  and  Brooklyn  where 
mothers  at  slight  cost  may  secure  proper 
infant  food,  and  where  much  educative 
work  is  done  by  the  visiting  nurse,  the  mul- 
tiplication  of  day  nurseries,  all  these  have 
helped  to  decrease  the  death  rate.  The 
Negroes  have  been  benefited  by  these  re- 
medial agencies,  but  their  percentage  of  290 
is  still  a  matter  for  grave  attention. 

Two  out  of  seven  of  New  York's  Negro 
babies  die  in  the  first  year,  but  the  other 
five  grow  up,   some   with  puny  arms   and 

*  It  is  interesting  to  see  that  the  married  women  of  Fall 
River,  where  we  found  a  very  high  infant  death  rate,  show 
a  percentage  of  married  women  at  work  of  twenty  in  a 
hundred. 


60  HALF  A  MAN 

ricketty  legs,  others  again  too  hardy  for 
bad  food  or  bad  air  to  härm. 

Like  the  babies  these  children  suffer  from 
their  mother's  absence  at  work.  Family 
ties  are  loose,  and  more  than  other  children 
they  are  handicapped  by  lack  of  proper 
home  care.  In  an  examination  of  the  rec- 
ords  of  the  Children's  Court  for  three  years 
I  found  that  out  of  717  arraignments  of 
colored  children,  221  were  for  improper 
guardianship,  30.8  per  cent  of  the  whole. 
Among  the  Russian  children  of  the  East 
Side,  Tenth  and  Eleventh  Wards,  only 
15  per  cent  of  arraignments  were  on  this 
complaint,  indicating  twice  as  many  children 
without  parental  care  among  the  colored 
as  among  the  children  of  the  Tenth  and 
Eleventh  Wards.  Rough  colored  girls,  also, 
whose  habits  were  too  depraved  to  permit  of 
their  remaining  without  restraint,  were  fre- 
quently  committed  to  reformatories. 

Truancy  is  not  uncommon  in  colored 
neighborhoods,  though  few  cases  come  before 
the  Courts.  Sometimes  the  boy  or  girl  is 
kept  at  home  to  care  for  the  younger  chil- 
dren, but  again,  lacking  the  mother's  over- 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     61 

sight,  he  remains  on  the  street  when  he 
should  be  in  school,  or  arrives  late  with  ill 
prepared  lessons. 

Asking  a  teacher  of  long  experience  among 
colored  and  white  children  eoncerning  their 
respective  scholarship,  he  assured  me  that 
the  colored  child  could  do  as  well  as  the 
white,  but  didn't.  "From  20  to  50  per 
cent  of  the  mothers  of  my  colored  chil- 
dren," he  Said,  "go  out  to  work.  There  is 
no  one  to  oversee  the  child' s  tasks,  and 
consequently  little  conscientious  study." 

One  can  scarcely  blame  the  children;  and 
certainly  one  cannot  blame  the  mothers  for 
toiling  for  their  support.  And  the  fathers, 
though  they  work  faithfully,  are  rarely 
able  to  earn  enough  unaided  to  support  their 
f amilies.  Perhaps  in  time  the  city  may  im- 
prove  matters  by  opening  its  school-rooms 
for  a  study  period  in  the  afternoon. 

But  meanwhile  the  chjldren  are  without 
proper  care.  This  is  not  hard  to  endure  in 
the  Summer,  but  in  winter  it  is  very  trying 
to  be  without  a  home.  Poor  little  cold 
boys  and  girls,  some  of  them  mere  babies! 
You  see  them  in  the  late  afternoon  sitting 


62  HALF  A  MAN 

on  the  tenement  stairs,  waiting  for  the  long 
day  to  be  done.  It  seems  a  week  since 
they  were  inside  eating  their  breakfast. 
The  city  has  not  pauperized  them  with  a 
luncheon,  and  they  have  had  only  cold  food 
since  morning.  Sometimes  they  have  been 
all  day  without  nourishment.  When  the 
door  is  opened  at  last,  there  are  many  help- 
ful  things  for  them  to  do  for  their  mother, 
and  reading  and  arithmetie  are  relegated 
to  so  late  an  hour  that  their  problem  is 
only  temporarily  solved  by  sleep. 

Not  all  the  colored  working  women,  how- 
ever,  go  out  for  employment.  Laundry 
work  is  an  important  home  industry,  and 
one  may  watch  many  mothers  at  their 
tubs  or  ironing-boards  from  Monday  morn- 
ing until  Saturday  night.  This  makes  the 
tenement  rooms,  tiny  enough  at  best,  sadly 
cluttered,  but  it  does  not  deprive  the  chil- 
dren  of  the  presence  of  their  mother,  who 
accepts  a  smaller  income  to  remain  at  home 
with  them.  For  after  we  have  made  füll 
allowance  for  the  lessening  of  family  ties 
among  the  Negroes  by  social  and  economic 
pressure,  we  find  that  the  majority  of  the 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     63 

colored  boys  and  girls  receive  a  due  share 
of  proper  parental  oversight.  They  are 
fed  on  appetizing  food,  cleanly  and  pret- 
tily  dressed,  they  are  encouraged  to  study 
and  to  improve  their  position,  and  they 
are  given  all  the  advantages  that  it  is  pos- 
sible  for  their  mothers  and  fathers  to 
secure. 

Jack  London  teils  in  the  "Children  of 
the  Abyss"  of  the  East  Side  of  London, 
where  "they  have  dens  and  lairs  into  which 
to  crawl  for  sleeping  purposes,  and  that  is 
all.  One  can  not  travesty  the  word  by 
calling  such  dens  and  lairs  'homes.'"  I 
have  Seen  thousands  of  Negro  dwelling- 
places,  but  I  cannot  think  of  half  a  dozen, 
however  great  their  poverty,  where  this 
description  would  be  correct.  No  matter 
how  dingy  the  tenement,  or  how  long  the 
hours  of  work,  the  mother,  and  the  father, 
too,  try  to  make  the  "four  walls  and  a 
ceiling"  to  which  they  return,  home.  Vis- 
itors  among  the  New  York  poor,  in  the  past 
and  in  the  present,  testify  that  given  the 
same  income  or  lack  of  income,  the  colored 
do  not  allow  their  surroundings  to  become 


64  HALF  A  MAN 

so  cheerless  or  so  filthy  as  the  white,  and 
that  when  there  is  an  opportunity  for  the 
mother  to  spend  some  time  in  the  house, 
the  rooms  take  on  an  air  of  pleasant  refine- 
ment.  Pictures  decorate  the  walls,  the  side- 
board  contains  many  pretty  dishes,  and  the 
table  is  set  three  times  a  day.  Meals  are  not 
eaten  out  of  the  paper  bag  common  on  New 
York's  East  Side,  but  there  is  something  of 
formality  about  the  dinner,  and  good  table 
manners  are  taught  the  children.  The  ten- 
ement  dwelling  becomes  a  home,  and  the 
boys  and  girls  pass  a  happy  childhood  in 
it. 

Watching  the  colored  children  for  many 
months  in  their  play  and  work,  I  have 
looked  for  possible  distinctive  traits.  The 
second  generation  of  New  Yorkers  greatly 
resembles  the  "Young  America"  of  all  na- 
tionalities  of  the  city,  shrill-voiced,  dis- 
respectful,  easily  diverted,  whether  at  work 
or  at  play,  shrewd,  alert,  and  mischievous 
—  the  New  York  street  child.  I  remember 
once  helping  with  a  club  of  eight  boys  where 
seven  nationalities  were  represented,  and 
where  no  one  could  have  distinguished  Irish 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     65 

from  German  or  Jew  from  Italian,  with  his 
eyes  shut.  Had  a  Negro  been  brought  up 
among  them  he  would  quickly  have  taken 
on  their  ways.  Of  the  colored  children  who 
model  their  lives  after  their  mischievous 
young  white  neighbors,  many  outdo  the 
whites  in  depravity  and  lawlessness;  but 
among  the  boys  and  girls  who  live  by  them- 
selves,  as  on  San  Juan  Hill,  one  sees  oeca- 
sional  interesting  traits. 

The  records  of  the  Children's  Court  of 
New  York  (Boroughs  of  Manhattan  and 
the  Bronx)  throw  a  little  light  on  this  mat- 
ter, and  are  sufficiently  important  to  quote 
with  some  fulness.  For  the  three  years 
studied,  1904,  1905,  1906,  I  tabulated  the 
cases  of  the  colored  children  brought  before 
the  court,  and  also  the  cases  of  the  children 
of  the  Tenth  and  Eleventh  Wards,  chiefly 
Hungarians  and  Russian  Jews,  expectingto 
find,  in  two  such  dissimilar  groups,  inter- 
esting comparisons.  The  followin»g  table 
shows  the  result  of  this  study.  The  court 
in  its  annual  report  gives  the  figures  for  the 
total  number  of  arrests  which  I  have  incor- 
porated  in  my  table: 


y 


66 


HALF  A  MAN 


Record  of  Arrests  in  Children's  Court  of  Manhattan 
AND  THE  Bronx  for  1904,  1905,  1906 


Negro  Arrests 

lOth  and  llth 
Wards  Arrests 

Total  arrests  for 

all  children  in 

Manhattan  and 

Bronx 

No.of 
children 

Arrests 
per 
Cent 

No.  of 
cbildren 

Arrests 
per 
Cent 

No.  of 
children 

Arrests 
per 
cent 

Petit  larceny 

56 

7.8 

139 

6.8 

2,697 

10.1 

Grand  larceny 

27 

3.8 

108 

5.3 

878 

3.3 

Burglary  —  Robbery  . 

27 

3.8 

116 

5.7 

1,383 

5.2 

Assault 

27 

3.8 

61 

3.0 

669 

2.5 

Improper  guardianship 

221 

30.8 

305 

15.0 

6,386 

23.9 

Disorderly  child  —  un- 

govemable  child  . . . 

90 

12.6 

124 

6.1 

1,980 

7.4 

Depraved  girl   

33 

4.6 

21 

1.1 

312 

1.2 

Violation  of  labor  law. 

0 

0 

73 

3.5 

592 

2.1 

Unlicensed  peddling  ^  . 

0 

0 

130 

6.4 

0 

.0 

Truancy  

5 

7 

23 

1  0 

298 

1.1 

Malicious  mischief .... 

1 

.1 

9 

.4 

179 

.7 

Violation  of  Park  Cor- 

poration ordinances . 

0 

0 

25 

1.2 

175 

.7 

Mischief,     including 

craps,     throwing 

stones,  building  bon- 

fires,  fighting,  etc 

214 

29.8 

896 

43.7 

10,267 

38.4 

Unclassified     felonies, 

misdemeanors 

13 

1.8 

16 

.7 

799 

3.0 

All  otliers 

3 

.4 

3 

.1 

90 

.4 

717 

100.0 

2049 

100.0 

26,705 

100.0 

Percentage  of  Negro  to  total,  1904-1907 2.7 

Percentage  of  Negro  to  total,  1907-1910 1.9 

^  My  tabulations  of  the   Negro  and  Tenth   and  Eleventh 
Ward  Children  are  from  the  Court's  unpublished  records  to 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     67 

Our  table  shows  us   that  which  we  have 
already  noted,  j;hf-— bigh-J>f^rrPTitnf]^^  ffi  im 

prnj2gr  gnarrliPTisHip  i^i;r\nn0^  the  Negroes  and 

the  grave  number  of  dpjrmvpd  Npgrn  girls, 
For  the  sins  of  petit  larceny,  grand  larceny, 
and  burglary,  putting  the  three  together, 
the  colored  child  shows  a  slightly  smaller 
percentage  than  the  East  Side  white,  a 
noticeably  smaller  percentage  than  the  total 
number  of  children.  The  sin  of  theft  is 
often  swiftly  attributed  to  a  black  face,  but 
this  percentage  indicates  that  the  colored 
child  has  no  "innate  tendency"  to  steal. 
Ten  per  cent  of  the  arrests  among  the  East 
Side  children  are  for  unlicensed  peddling 
and  violation  of  the  labor  law,  but  no  little 
Negro  boys  plunge  into  the  business  world 
before  their  time.  They  have  no  keen  com- 
mercial  sense  to  lead  them  to  undertake 
transactions  on  their  own  account,  and  they 
are  not  desired  by  purchasers  of  boy  labor 
in  the  city. 

The  most  important  heading,  numerically, 

which  I  was  allowed  access.  The  absence  of  any  figures  for 
Unlicensed  Peddling  in  the  Total  indicates  that  in  its  printed 
reports  the  Court  has  included  Unlicensed  Peddling  with 
Unclassified  Misdemeanors. 


68  HALF  A  MAN 

is  that  of  mischief,  and  here  the  Negro  falls 
far  behind  the  Eastsider,  behind  the  aver- 
age  for  the  whole.  While  depravity  among 
the  girls  and  improper  guardianship  are  the 
race's  most  serious  defects,  as  shown  by  the 
arrests  among  its  children  in  New  York, 
tractability  and  a  decent  regard  for  law  are 
among  its  merits.  The  colored  child,  espe- 
cially  if  he  is  in  a  segregated  neighborhood, 
is  not  greatly  inclined  to  mischief.  My  own 
experience  has  shown  me  that  life  in  a  tene- 
ment  on  San  Juan  Hill  is  devoid  of  the  in- 
genious,  exasperating  deviltry  of  an  Irish  or 
German-American  neighborhood.  No  daily 
summons  calls  one  to  the  door  only  to  hear 
wildly  scurrying  footsteps  on  the  stairs. 
Mail  boxes  are  left  solely  for  the  postman's 
use,  and  hallways  are  not  defaced  by  obscene 
writing.  There  is  plenty  of  crap  shooting, 
rarely  interfered  with  by  the  police,  but  there 
is  little  impertinent  annoyance  or  destruc- 
tiveness. 

An  ob  Server,  watching  the  little  colored 
boys  and  girls  as  they  play  on  the  city  streets, 
finds  much  that  is  attractive  and  pleasant. 
They  sing  their  songs,  learned  at  school  and 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     69 

on  the  playground,  fly  their  kites,  spin  their 
tops,  run  their  races.  Tliey  usually  finish 
what  they  begin,  not  turning  at  the  first 
interruption  to  take  up  something  eise. 
They  move  more  deliberately  than  most 
children,  and  their  voices  are  slower  to  adopt 
the  New  York  screech  than  those  of  their 
Irish  neighbors  on  the  block  above  them. 
Altogether  they  are  attractive  children, 
particularly  the  smaller  ones,  who  are  more 
energetic  than  their  big  brothers  and  sis- 
ters.  Good  manners  are  often  evident. 
While  receiving  an  afternoon  call  from  two 
girls,  aged  four  and  five,  I  was  invited  by 
the  older  to  partake  of  half  a  peanut,  the 
other  half  of  which  she  split  in  two  and  gen- 
erously  shared  with  her  companion.  "Gim' 
me  five  cents,"  I  once  heard  a  Negro  boy  of 
twelve  say  to  his  mother  who  walked  past 
him  on  the  street.  She  did  not  seem  to 
hear,  but  the  boy's  companion,  a  youth  of 
the  same  age,  reproved  him  severely  for 
his  rüde  speech.  When  Walking  with  an 
Irish  friend,  who  had  worked  among  the 
children  of  her  own  race,  I  saw  a  colored 
boy  run  swiftly  up  the  block  to  meet  his 


70  HALF  A  MAN 

mother.  He  kissed  her,  took  her  bündle 
from  her,  and  carrying  it  under  his  arm, 
walked  quietly  by  her  side  to  their  home. 
"There  are  many  boys  here,"  I  said,  "who 
are  just  as  courteous  as  that."  "Is  that 
so?"  she  retorted  quickly,  "Then  you 
needn't  be  explaining  to  me  any  further 
the  reason  for  the  high  death  rate." 

The  gentle,  chivalrous  affection  of  the 
child  for  its  mother  is  daily  to  be  seen  among 
these  boys  and  girls.  "Your  African,"  said 
Mary  Kingsley,  "is  little  better  than  a 
slave  to  his  mother,  whom  he  loves  with  a 
love  he  gives  to  none  other.  This  love  of 
his  mother  is  so  dominant  a  factor  in  his 
Hfe  that  it  must  be  taken  into  considera- 
tion  in  attempting  to  understand  the  true 
Negro."^  And  if  the  child  lavishes  affec- 
tion upon  its  parent,  the  mother  in  turn 
gives  untiringly  to  her  child.  She  is  the 
"mammy"  of  whom  we  have  so  often  heard, 
but  with  her  loving  care  bestowed,  as  it 
should  be,  upon  her  own  offspring.  She 
tries  to  keep  her  child  clean  in  body  and  spirit 
and  to  train  it  to  be  gentle  and  good;  and 

1  Mary  Kingsley,  "West  African  Studies,"  p.  319. 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     71 

in  return  usually  she  receives  a  stanch 
devotion.  I  once  found  fault  with  a  col- 
ored  girl  of  ten  years  for  her  rüde  behavior 
with  her  girl  companions,  adding  that  per- 
haps  she  did  not  know  any  better,  at  which 
she  turned  on  me  almost  fiercely  and  said, 
"It's  our  fault;  we  know  better.  Our 
mothers  learn  us.  It's  we  that's  bold." 
As  one  watches  the  boys  and  girls  Walking 
quietly  up  the  street  of  a  Sunday  afternoon 
to  their  Sunday-school,  neatly  and  cleanly 
dressed,  one  appreciates  the  anxious,  mater- 
nal  care  that  strives  as  best  it  knows  how, 
to  rear  honest  and  God-fearing  men  and 
women. 

Paul  Lawrence  Dunbar  has  painted  the 
Negro  father,  his  "little  brown  baby  wif 
sparklin'  eyes,"  nestling  elose  in  his  arms. 
Working  at  unusual  hours,  the  colored  man 
often  has  a  part  of  the  day  to  give  to  his 
family,  and  one  sees  him  wheeling  the  baby 
in  its  carriage,  or  playing  with  the  older 
boys  and  girls. 

Negroes  seem  naturally  a  gentle,  loving 
people.  As  you  live  with  them  and  watch 
them  in  their  homes,  you  find  some  coarse- 


72  HALF  A  MAN 

ness,  but  little  real  brutality.  Rarely  does 
a  father  or  mother  strike  a  child.  Travel- 
lers in  Central  and  West  Africa  describe 
them  as  the  most  friendly  of  savage  folk, 
and  where,  as  in  our  city,  they  live  largely 
to  themselves,  they  keep  something  of  these 
charaeteristics.  But  it  is  only  a  step  in 
New  York  from  Africa  into  Italy  or  Ireland; 
and  the  step  may  bring  a  sad  jostling  to 
native  friendliness.  To  hold  his  own  with 
his  white  companions  on  the  street  or  in 
school,  the  Negro  must  become  pugnacious, 
callous  to  insult,  ready  to  hit  back  when 
affronted.  Many  are  like  the  little  girl  who 
told  me  that  she  did  not  care  to  play  with 
white  children,  "because,"  she  explained, 
*'my  mother  teils  me  to  smack  any  one 
who  calls  me  nigger,  and  I  ain't  looking  for 
trouble."  The  colored  children  aren't  look- 
ing for  trouble.  They  have  a  tendency  to 
run  away  from  it  if  they  see  it  in  the  form  of 
a  gang  of  boys  coming  to  them  around  the 
corner.  They  believe  if  they  had  a  fight,  it 
wouldn't  be  a  fair  one,  and  that  if  the  police- 
man  came,  he  would  arrest  them  and  not 
their  Irish  enemies.     So  they  grow  up   on 


CHILD  OF  THE  TENEMENT     73 

streets  through  which  few  white  men  pass, 
leading  their  own  lives  with  their  own  people 
and  thinking  not  overmuch  of  the  other  race 
that  surrounds  them.  But  the  day  comes 
when  school  is  over,  and  the  outside  world, 
however  indifferent  they  may  be  to  it,  must 
be  met.  They  must  go  out  and  grapple 
with  it  for  the  means  to  hire  a  cooking 
stove  and  a  dark  bedroom  of  their  own;  they 
must  think  of  making  money.  So  they  stand 
at  the  Corner  of  their  street,  looking  out, 
and  then  move  slowly  on  to  find  what  oppor- 
tunity  is  theirs  to  come  to  a  füll  manhood. 
The  way  ahead  does  not  seem  very  bright, 
and  some  move  so  timidly  that  failure  is 
sure  to  meet  them  at  the  first  turning.  But 
some  have  the  courage  of  the  little  colored 
girl,  aged  four,  who  led  a  line  of  kinder- 
garten  children  up  their  street  and  then  on 
to  the  unknown  country  that  lay  between 
them  and  Central  Park.  At  the  first  block 
a  mob  of  Irish  boys  feil  upon  them,  run- 
ning  between  the  lines,  throwing  sticks,  and 
calling  "nigger"  with  screams  and  jeers. 
The  leader  held  her  head  high,  paying  no 
attention   to  her   persecutors.     She  neither 


74  HALF  A  MAN 

quickened  nor  slowed  her  pace,  and  when 
the  child  at  her  side  feil  back,  she  pulled  her 
hand  and  said,  "Don't  notice  them.  Walk 
straischt  ahead." 


CHAPTER  IV 

Earning  a  Living  —  Manual  Labor  and 
THE  Trades 

In  "The  American  Race  Problem,"  one  of 
our  recent  important  books  upon  the  Negro, 
the  author,  Mr.  Alfred  Holt  Stone  of  Missis- 
sippi, after  a  survey  of  the  world,  declares 
that  "to  me,  it  seems  the  plainest  faet  con- 
fronting  the  Negro  is  that  there  is  but  one 
area  of  any  size  wherein  his  race  may  obey 
the  command  to  eat  its  bread  in  the  sweat  of 
its  face  side  by  side  with  the  white  man. 
That  area  is  composed  of  the  Southern 
United  States."  ^ 

On  examination  we  find  that  only  men  of 
English  and  North  European  stock  are 
"white"  to  Mr.  Stone,  and  that  his  State- 
ment is  too  sweeping  by  a  continent  or  two, 
but  as  applying  to  the  United  States,  it  will 

1  Alfred  Holt  Stone,  "Studies  in  the  American  Race  Prob- 
lem," p.  164. 

75 


76  HALF  A  MAN 

usually  meet  with  unqualified  approval.  It 
is  generally  believed  that  discrimination  con- 
tinually  retards  the  Negro  in  his  search  for 
employment  in  the  North,  while  in  the  South 
"  he  is  given  a  man's  chance  in  the  commer- 
cial  World."  Northern  men  visiting  southern 
colored  industrial  schools  advise  the  pupils 
to  remain  where  they  are,  and  restless  spirits 
among  the  race  are  assured  that  it  is  better 
to  submit  to  some  personal  oppression  than 
to  go  to  a  land  of  uncertain  employment. 
The  past  glory  of  the  North  is  dwelt  upon, 
its  days  of  black  waiters,  and  barbers,  and 
coachmen,  but  the  present  is  painted  in 
harsh  colors. 

There  is  some  truth  in  this  comparison  of 
economic  conditions  among  the  Negroes  in 
the  North  and  in  the  South,  but  it  must  not 
be  taken  too  literally.  Today's  tendency 
to  minimize  southern  and  maximize  northern 
race  difficulties,  while  strengthening  the 
bonds  between  white  Americans,  sometimes 
obscures  the  real  issues  regarding  colored 
labor  in  this  country.  We  need  to  look  care- 
fully  at  conditions  in  numbers  of  selected 
localities,    and    we    can    find    no    northern 


EARNING  A  LIVING  77 

city  more  worthy  of  our  study  than  New 
York. 

The  New  York  Negro  constitutes  today  v.. 

but  two  per  cent  of  the  population  of  Man-  ^^  p. 
hattan,  one  and  eight-tenths  per  cent  of  that  > 
of  Greater  New  York;  and,  as  many  workers 
in  Manhattan  Hve  in  Brooklyn,  the  larger 
area  is  the  better  one  to  consider.  In  1900, 
the  census  volume  on  occupations  gives  the 
number  öf  males  over  ten  years  of^Jige  en- 
gage^Tin  gainful  occupations  in  Greater  New 
York  atl^l  0^,471,  _^nd  .^^oj^  thaj  „ni^^^ 
20,395  or  1.8  per  cent,  eighteen  in  every 
thousand^are_Negroes,  In  Atlanta,  to  take 
a  Southern  commercial  centre,  351  out  of 
every/  thousand  male  workers  are  Negroes. 
This  enormous  difference  in  the  proportion 
of  colored  workers  to  white  must  never  be 
forgotten  in  considering  the  labor  Situation 
North  and  South.  We  cannot  expect  in  the 
North  to  See  the  Negro  monopolizing  an 
industry  which  demands  a  larger  share  of 
workers  than  he  can  produce,  nor  need  we 
admit  that  he  has  lost  an  occupation  when 
he  does  not  control  it. 

We  often  come  upon  such  a  statement  as 


78  HALF  A  MAN 

that  of  Samuel  R.  Scottron,  a  colored  busi- 
ness  man,  who,  writing  in  1905,  said,  "The 
Italian,  Sicilian,  Greek,  occupy  quite  every 
industry  that  was  confessedly  the  Negro's 
forty  years  ago.  They  have  the  bootblack 
Stands,  the  news  Stands,  barbers'  shops, 
Walters'  situations,  restaurants,  janitorships, 
catering  business,  stevedoring,  steamboat 
work,  and  other  situations  occupied  by 
Negroes."^  Did  the  colored  men  have  all 
this  forty  years  ago  when  they  were  only  one 
and  a  half  per  cent  of  the  population?  If 
so,  there  were  giants  in  those  days,  or  New 
York  was  much  simpler  in  its  habits  than 
now.  At  present  the  control  by  the  colored 
people  of  any  such  an  array  of  industries 
would  be  quite  impossible.  To  take  four 
out  of  the  nine  occupations  enumerated:  the 
census  of  1900  gives  the  number  of  waiters 
at  31,211;  barbers,  12,022;  janitors,  6184; 
bootblacks,  2648;  a  total  of  52,065.  But  in 
1900  there  were  only  20,395  Negro  males 
engaged  in  gainful  occupations  in  New  York. 
Without  a  vigorous  astral  body  the  20,000- 
odd  colored  men  could  not  occupy  half  these 

1  New  York  Age,  August  24,  1905. 


EARNING  A  LIVING 


79 


Jobs.  If  tliey  dominated  in  the  field  of 
waiters  they  must  abandon  handling  the 
razor,  and  not  all  the  colored  boys  could 
muster  2684  strong  to  black  the  boots  of 
Greater  New  York.  We  must  at  the  outset 
recognize  that  as  a  labor  factor  the  Negro  in 
New  York  is  insignificant. 

The  volume  of  the  federal  census  for  1900 
on  occupations  shows  us  how  the  Negroes 
are  employed  in  New  York  City.  There  are 
five  occupational  divisions,  and  the  Negroes 
and  whites  are  divided  among  them  as 
f  ollows : 


White 

Per 
Cent 

Negro 

Per 
Cent 

Agricultural  pursuits 

Professional  Service    

9,853 
60,037 

.9 
5.6 

251 
729 

1.2 
3.6 

(Domestic  and  personal  Service 

Trade  ändtraiispörtation 

Manufacturing  and  mechani- 

189,282 
398,997 

417,634 

17.6 
37.1 

38.8 

11,843 
5,798 

1,774 

5^.1 

28.r 

8.7 

Total 

1,075,803 

100.0 

20,395 

100.0 

But  in  examining  in  detail  the  occupations 
under  these  different  headings,  we  get  a 
clearer  view  of  the  place  the  Negro  main- 
tains  as  a  laborer  by  finding  out  how  many 


k/' 


80 


HALF  A  MAN 


* 


workers  he  supplies  to  every  thousand  work- 
ers  in  a  given  occupation.  He  should  average 
eighteen  if  he  is  to  occupy  the  same  economic 
Status  as  the  white  man.  Taking  the  first 
(numerically)  important  division,  Domestic 
and  Personal  Service,  we  get  the  following 
table: 

Domestic  and  Personal  Service 


Number  of 
Negroes  to 
each  1000 
workers  in 
occupation. 


Barbers  and  hairdressers   

Bootblacks 

Launderers 

Servants  and  waiters 

Stewards 

Nurses 

Boarding  and  lodging  house 
keepers    

Hotel  keepers 

Restaurant  keepers 

Saloon  keepers  and  bartenders .  . 

Janitors  and  sextons 

Watchmen,  firemen,  policemen .  . 

Soldiers,  sailors,  marines    

Laborers      (including      elevator 

tenders,  laborers  in  coal  yards, 

longshoremen,  and  stevedores) 

Total,  including  some  occupa- 

tions  not  specified 


Total  num- 
ber of  males 
in  each  oc- 
cupation. 

Number  of 
Negroes    in 
each    occu- 
pation. 

12,022 

215 

2,648 

51 

6,881 

70 

31,211 

6,280 

1,366 

140 

1,342 

22 

474 

10 

3,139 

23 

2,869 

116 

17,656 

111 

6,184 

800 

16,093 

116 

3,707 

56 

98,531 

3,719 

206,215 

11,843 

18 
20 
10 
201 
103 
16 

21 
7 

40 

6 

129 

7 

15 


38 
57 


EARNING  A  LIVING  81 

The  most  important  of  these  groups,  not 
only  in  absolute  numbers,  but  in  Propor- 
tion to  the  whole  working  popuIation,  is  the 
servants  and  waiters.  Two  hundred  out  of 
every  thousand  (we  must  remember  that  the 
Proportion  to  the  popuIation  would  be  eigh- 
teen  out  of  every  thousand)  are  holding 
positions  with  which  they  have  long  been 
identified  in  America.  We  cannot  teil  from 
the  census  how  many  "live  out,"  or  how 
many  are  able  to  go  nightly  to  their  homes, 
how  many  have  good  Jobs,  and  how  many 
are  in  second  and  third  rate  places.  A 
study  of  my  own  of  716  colored  men  helps 
to  answer  one  of  these  questions.  Out  of 
176  men  Coming  under  the  servants'  and 
waiters'  Classification,  I  found  5  caterers, 
24  Cooks,  26  butlers,  30  general  Utility  men, 
41  hotel  men,  and  50  waiters.  Sixty  per 
Cent  of  the  176  lived  in  their  own  homes,  not 
in  their  masters'.  Some  of  the  cooks  and 
waiters  were  on  Pullman  trains  or  on  river 
boats  or  steamers;  only  a  few  were  in  first- 
class  positions  in  New  York.  In  the  summer 
many  of  these  men  are  likely  to  go  to  country 
hoteis,  and  with  the  winter,  if  New  York 


82 


HALF  A  MAN 


3^ 


offers  nothing,  migrate  to  Palm  Beach  or 
stand  on  the  street  corner  while  their  wives 
go  out  to  wash  and  scrub. ^  "An'  it  don't 
do  fer  me  ter  complain,"  one  of  them  teils 
me,  "eise  he  gits  *high'  an'  goes  off  fer  good." 
Walters  in  restaurants  sometimes  do  not 
mal£e  more  than  sTx  dollars  a  week,  to  be 
supplemented  by  tips,  briiiging;'the  sum  üjp 
to  nine  or  ten  dollars.     Hall  men  make  about 

^Occupations  in  1907  of  716  colored  men  (secured  from 
records  of  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Association  and  per- 
sonal Visits)  compared  with  eensus  figures  of  occupations  in 
1900. 


716  Men 

Census 

Agricultural  pursuits                                   .... 

_ 

1.2 

Professional  Service,  27  men 

3.8 
50.6 

3.6 

Domestic  and  personal  service,  363  men 

58.1 

5  barbers,  5  caterers,  24  cooks,  30  general  Util- 

ity men,  41  hotel  men,  76  waiters  and  butlers. 

8  valets,  35  janitors  and  sextons,  29  long- 

shoremen,  5  laborers  in  tunnels,  7  asphalt 

workers,  57  elevator  men,  41  laborers. 

Trade  and  transportation,  279  men         

39.0 

28.4 

10  Chauffeurs,  35  drivers,  13  expressmen,  8 

hostlers,  12  messe  ngers,   14  municipal  em- 

ployees,  127  porters  in  stores,  15  porters  on 

trains,  24  clerks,  21  merchants. 

Manufacturing  and   mechanical  pursuits,   47 

men 

6.6 

8.7 

100.0 

100.0 

EARNING  A  LIVING  83 

the  same,  but  both  waiters  and  hall  men  in 
clubs  and  hoteis  receive  large  sums  in  tips 
or  in  Christmas  money.  The  Pullman  car 
waiters  have  small  wages  but  large  fees. 

Looking  again  at  the  census,  we  see  that 
129  out  of  every  thousand  janitors  and 
sextons  are  eolored.  The  janitor's  position 
varies  from  the  impecunious  place  in  a  tene- 
ment,  where  the  only  wage  is  the  rent,  to  the 
Charge  of  a  large  office  or  apartment  building. 
Then  come  the  laborers,  nearly  four  thousand 
strong,  with  the  ^evator  boy  pg  ^  familiär 
figure.  Forty  per  cent  of  the  139  laborers  in 
my  own  tabulation  were  elevator  boys,  for, 
except  in  office  buildings  and  large  stores 
and  hoteis,  this  occupation  is  given  over  to 
the  Negro,  who  spends  twelve  hours  a  day 
drowsing  in  a  corner  or  standing  to  turn  a 
wheel.  Paul  Lawrence  Dunbar  wrote  poetry 
while  he  ran  an  elevator,  and  ambitious  if 
less  talented  eolored  boys  today  study  civil 
Service  examinations  in  their  unoccupied 
time;  but  the  Situation  as  a  life  Job  is  not 
alluring.  Twenty-five  dollars  a  month  for 
wage,  with  perhaps  a  half  this  sum  in  tips, 
twelve  hours  on  duty,  one  week  in  the  night 


84  HALF  A  MAN 

time  and  the  next  in  the  day  —  no  wonder 
the  personnel  of  this  staff  changes  frequently 
in  an  apartment  house.  A  bright  boy  will 
be  taken  by  some  business  man  for  a  better 
Job,  and  a  lazy  one  drifts  away  to  look  for 
an  easier  task,  or  is  dismissed  by  an  irate 
janitor. 

Quite  another  group  of  laborers  are  the 
longshoremen  who,  far  from  lounging  indo- 
lently  in  a  hallway,  are  straining  every 
muscle  as  they  heave  some  great  crate  into 
a  ship's  hold.  The  work  of  the  New  York 
dockers  has  been  admirably  deseribed  by 
Mr.  Ernest  Poole,  who  says  of  the  thirty 
thousand  longshoremen  on  the  wharves  of 
New  York  —  Italians,  Germans,  Negroes, 
and  Swedes,  "Far  from  being  the  drunkards 
and  bums  that  some  people  think  them,  they 
are  like  the  men  of  the  lumber  camps  come 
to  town  —  huge  of  limb  and  tough  of  muscle, 
hard-swearing,  quick-fisted,  big  of  heart." 
Their  tasks  are  heavy  and  irregulär.  When 
the  ship  comes  in,  the  average  stretch  of 
work  for  a  gang  is  from  twelve  to  twenty 
hours,  and  sometimes  men  go  to  a  second 
gang   and   labor   thirty-five   hours    without 


EARNING  A  LIVING  85 

sleep.  Their  pay  for  this  dangerous,  exhaust- 
ing  toil  averages  eleven  dollars  a  week. 
"There  are  thousands  of  Negroes  on  the 
docks  of  New  York,"  Mr.  Poole  writes  me, 
"and  they  must  be  able  to  work  long  hours 
at  a  Stretch  or  they  would  not  have  their 
Jobs."  At  dusk,  Brooklynites  see  these 
black,  huge-muscled  men,  many  of  them 
West  Indians,  Walking  up  the  hill  at  Mon- 
tague  Street.  In  New  York  they  live  among 
the  Irish  in  "HelFs  Kitchen"  and  on  San 
Juan  Hill.  They  are  usually  steady  sup- 
porters of  families. 

New  York  demands  strong,  unskilled  la- 
borers. To  some  she  pays  a  large  wage, 
and  Negroes  have  gone  in  numbers  into  the 
excavations  under  the  rivers,  though  a  lin- 
gering  death  may  prove  the  end  of  their  two 
and  a  half  or  perhaps  six  or  seven  dollar  a 
day  Job.  Many  colored  men  worked  in  the 
subway  during  its  construction.  One  sees 
them  often  employed  at  rock-drilling  or 
Clearing  land  for  new  buildings.  About  a 
third  of  the  asphalt  workers,  making  their 
two  dollars  and  a  half  a  day,  are  colored. 
Some  educated,  refined  Negroes  choose  the 


86  HALF  A  MAN 

laborer's  work  rather  than  pleasanter  but 
poorly  paid  occupations.  A  highly  trained 
colored  man,  a  shipping  clerk,  making  seven 
dollars  a  week,  left  his  employer  to  take  a 
Job  of  concreting  in  the  subway  at  $1.80  a 
day.  His  decision  was  in  favor  of  dirty, 
severe  labor,  but  a  living  wage. 

When  the  next  census  is  published,  tliose 
of  US  who  are  carefully  watching  the  economic 
condition  of  the  Negro  expect  to  find  a  move- 
ment from  domestic  Service  into  the  posi- 
tions  of  laborers,  including  the  porters  in 
Stores,  who  belong  in  our  second  cQnsus 
division. 

Kelly  Miller^  describes  the, massive Juiild- 
ings  and  sky-seeking  structures  of  our jnorth- 
ern  city,  and  finds  no  status_for..the JSTegro 
aBove  the  cellar  floor-.  One  can  see  the 
colored  youth  gazing  wistfully  through  the 
office  window  at  the  clerk,  whose  business 
reaches  across  the  ocean  to  bewilderingly 
wonderful  continents,  knowing  as  he  does 
that  the  employment  he  may  find  in  that 
office  will  be  emptying  the  white  man's  waste 
paper  basket. 

»Kelly  Miller's  "Race  Adjustment,"  p.  129. 


EARNING  A  LIVING 


87 


Trade  and  Transportation 


Total  num- 
ber of  males 
in  each  oc- 
cupation. 

Number  of 

Negroes  in 

each  occu- 

pation. 

27.456 

67 

11,472 

7 

22,613 

33 

80,564 

423 

72,684 

162 

45,740 

94 

3,225 

36 

8,188 

145 

3,111 

18 

51,063 

1439 

5,891 

633 

967 

9 

11,831 

70 

7,375 

11 

2,430 

6 

12,635 

69 

13,451 

335 

11,322 

2143 

1,572 

15 

405,675 

5798 

Number  of 
Negroes  to 
each  1000 
workers  in 
occupation. 


Agents  —  commercial    travellers 

Bankers,  brokers,  and  officials  of 
banks  and  companies 

Bookkeepers  —  accountants   .  .  . 

Clerks,  copyists  (including  ship- 
ping  Clerks,  letter  and  mail  car- 
riers) 

Merchants  (wholesale  and  retail) 

Salesmen 

Typewriters    

Boatmen  and  sailors 

Foremen  and  overseers 

Draymen,  hackmen,  teamsters. . 

Hostlers 

Livery  stable  keepers 

Steam  railway  employees 

Street  railway  employees 

Telegraph  and  telephone  Opera- 
tors   

Hucksters  and  peddlers 

Messengers,  errand  and  oflSce 
boys 

Porters  and  helpers  (in  stores, 
etc.) 

Undertakers 

Total,  including  some  occupa- 
tions  not  specified 


5 

2 

2 

11 

18 

6 

28 

107 

9 

6 

1 

2 
5 

25 

188 
9 

14 


88  HALF  A  MAN 

This,  however,  does  not  apply  to  govern- 
ment  positions,  and  a  large  number  of  the 
423  colored  clerks  in  1900  were  probably  in 
United  States  and  municipal  service.  The 
latter  we  shall  consider  later  as  we  study  the 
Negro  and  the  municipaHty.  Of  the  former, 
in  1909  there  were  about  176  in  the  New 
York  post-offices.^  Ambitious  boys  work 
industriously  at  civil  service  examinations, 
and  a  British  West  Indian  will  even  become 
an  American  citizen  for  the  chance  of  a  con- 
genial  occupation.  The  clerkship,  that  to  a 
white  man  is  only  a  stepping-stone,  to  a 
Negro  is  a  highly  coveted  position. 

I  have  made  two  divisions  of  this  census 
list;  the  first  includes  those  occupations  re- 
quiring  intellectual  skill  and  carrying  with 
them  some  social  position,  the  second,  those 
demanding  only  manual  work.  It  is  in  the 
second  that  the  colored  man  finds  a  place, 
and  as  a  porter  he  numbers  2143,  and  reaches 
almost  as  high  a  percentage  as  the  waiter 
and  servant.  Porters'  positions  are  paid 
from  five  to  fifteen  dollars  a  week,  the  man 

*  It  is  difficult  to  get  accurate  figures  as  no  official  record 
is  kept  of  color. 


EARNING  A  LIVING  89 

receiving  the  latter  wage  performing  also  the 
duties  of  shipping  clerk.  There  is  some 
opportunity  for  advance,  always  within  the 
basement,  and  there  are  regulär  hours  and  a 
fairly  steady  Job. 

The  heading  of  draymen,  hackmen,  and 
teamsters,  with  28  colored  in  every  thousand, 
shows  that  the  Negro  has  not  lost  his  place 
as  a  driver.  The  chauffeur  does  not  appear 
in  the  census,  but  the  Negro  is  steadily 
increasing  in  numbers  in  this  occupation,  and 
conducts  three  garages  of  his  own. 

The  last  census  division  to  be  considered 
in  this  chapter  is  that  of  Manufacturing  and 
Mechanical  Pursuits. 

When  Mr.  Stone  wrote  of  the  Southern 
States  as  the  only  place  in  which  the  Negro 
could  "earn  his  bread  in  the  sweat  of  his 
face,"  side  by  side  with  the  white  man,  he 
must  especially  have  been  thinking  of  work- 
ers  in  the  skilled  trades.  Unskilled  laborers 
in  New  York  are  drenched  in  a  common 
grimy  fellowship.  But  in  this  last  division 
the  Negro  is  conspicuous  by  his  absence. 
Only  four  in  every  thousand  where  there 
should  be  eighteen!     In  Atlanta,  under  this 


90  HALF  A   MAN 

Manupacturing  and  Mechanical  Pühsuits 


Engineers,  firemen  (not  locomo 
tive) 

Masons  (brick  and  stone) 

Painters,  glaziers,  and  varnishers 

Piasterers  

Blacksmiths 

Butchers  

Carpenters  and  joiners 

Iron  and  steel  workers 

Paper  hangers    

Photographers 

Plumbers,  gas  and  steam  fitters . 

Printers,  lithographers,  and  press- 
men 

Tailors 

Tobacco  and  cigar  factory  Opera- 
tors     

Fishermen  and  oystermen 

Miners  and  quarrymen 

Machinists   

Total,  including  some  occupa- 
tions  not  specified 


Total  num- 
ber of  males 
in  each  oc- 
cupation. 

Number  ot 

Negroes  in 

each  occu- 

pation. 

16,579 

227 

12,913 

94 

27,135 

177 

4,019 

51 

7,289 

29 

12,643 

31 

29,904 

94 

10,372 

40 

962 

18 

1,590 

22 

16,614 

31 

21,521 

53 

56,094 

69 

11,689 

189 

1,439 

65 

326 

21 

17,241 

47 

419,594 

1774 

Number  of 
Negroes  to 
each  1000 
workers  in 
occupation. 


14 
7 
6 

12 
4 
2 
3 
4 

19 

14 
2 

2 
1 

16 

45 

64 

3 


Bakers,  boot  and  shoe  makers,  gold  and  silver  workers, 
brass  workers,  tin  plate  and  tin  wäre  makers,  box  makers, 
cabinet  makers,  marble  and  stone  cutters,  book-binders, 
clock  and  watch  makers,  confectioners,  engravers,  glass 
workers,  hat  and  cap  makers,  and  others  —  not  more  than 
nineteen  in  any  one  occupation,  nor  a  higher  per  cent  than 
four  in  a  thousand. 


EARNING  A  LIVING  91 

division,  the  race  reaches  almost  its  due 
Proportion,  279  in  a  thousand  instead  of  351. 
The  largest  number  in  any  trade  in  New 
York  is  189  men  among  the  Cuban  tobacco 
workers.  Seventy-five  per  cent  of  all  the 
masons  in  Atlanta  are  colored  men,  while  in 
New  York  the  colored  are  less  than  one 
per  cent.  Looking  down  the  list  we  see  that 
the  figures  are  small  and  the  percentage  insig- 
nificant.  The  highly  skilled  and  best  paid 
trades  are  seemingly  as  far  removed  from 
the  Negro  as  the  positions  of  floor-walkers 
or  cashiers  of  banks. 

Omitting  for  the  present  the  professional 
class,  we  have  reviewed  the  Negro  as  a 
worker,  and  neither  in  wages  nor  choice  of 
occupation  has  he  risen  far  to  success.  In 
domestic  Service  he  has  gone  a  little  down 
the  ladder,  serving  in  less  desirable  positions 
than  in  former  years.  Why  has  this  hap- 
pened.f^  What  good  reasons  are  there  for 
these  conditions.f* 

The  first  and  most  obvious  reason  I^JJ^'Ce 
prejudice.  No  display  of  talent,  however 
prodigious,  will  open  certain  occupations  to 
the  colored  race.     As  a  salesman  he  could 


92  HALF  A  MAN 

teach  courteous  manners  to  some  of  our 
white  salesmen  in  New  York,  biit  he  is  never 
given  a  chance.  There  are  a  few  Negroes, 
digging  in  the  tunnels  or  sweeping  down  the 
subway  stairs,  who  are  capable  of  filhng  the 
clerkships  that  are  counted  the  perquisites 
of  the  whites;  but  clerkships  are  only  acces- 
sible  as  they  are  associated  with  municipal  or 
federal  service.  Of  course  there  are  excep- 
tions,  and  though  they  do  not  affect  the  rule, 
they  show  the  existence  of  a  few  employers 
who  ignore  the  color  Hne,  and  a  few  Negroes 
of  inexhaustible  perseverance. 

Mr.  Stone  argues  that  the  Negro  in  the 
South  Profits  by  the  strict  drawing  of  the 
color  line,  since  the  white  man,  always  con- 
sidered  the  superior,  is  not  lowered  in  the 
eyes  of  the  Community  by  working  with  the 
black  man.  The  Southern  white  may  lay 
bricks  on  the  same  wall  with  the  Southern 
black,  secure  in  his  superior  social  position. 
But  this  seems  fanciful  as  an  explanation  of 
labor  conditions.  The  black  doctor,  for  in- 
stance,  in  those  localities  where  the  color 
line  is  most  rigid,  may  not  ask  the  white 
doctor  to  consult  with  him;  or  if  he  does,  his 


EARNING  A  LIVING  93 

prompt  removal  from  the  Community  is 
requested.  Colored  postal  clerks  are  in  dis- 
favor  in  the  South,  though  not  colored  post- 
men.  North  or  South,  the  Negro  gets  an 
opportunity  to  work  where  he  is  imperatively 
needed.  Constituting  one-third  of  the  work- 
ing  Population,  he  can  make  a  place  for  him- 
self  in  the  laboring  world  of  Atlanta  as  he 
cannot  in  New  York.  Pick  up  the  20,000 
New  York  Negroes  and  drop  them  in  Liberia, 
and  in  two  or  three  weeks  Ellis  Island  could 
empty  out  sufficient  men  to  fill  their  places; 
but  remove  a  third  of  the  male  workers  from 
Atlanta,  and  the  city  for  years  would  suffer 
from  the  calamity.  If  they  are  the  only 
available  source  of  labor,  colored  men  can 
work  by  the  side  of  white  men;  but  where 
the  white  man  strongly  dominates  the  labor 
Situation,  he  tries  to  push  his  black  brother 
into  the  Jobs  for  which  he  does  not  care  to 
compete. 

We  have  seen,  however,  that  in  some  occu- 
pations  in  New  York  the  Negroes  appear  in 
such  Proportion  as  should  be  sufficient  to 
secure  them  excellent  positions;  the  most 
conspicuous  instance  being  that  of  the  200 


94  HALF  A  MAN 

colored  waiters  out  of  every  thousand.  Why, 
then,  do  we  not  see  Negroes  serving  in  the 
best  hoteis  the  city  affords? 

It  has  been  an  ideal  of  American  democ- 
racy,  a  part  of  its  strenuous  individualism, 
that  each  member  of  the  Community  should 
have  füll  liberty  in  the  pursuit  of  wealth. 
The  ambitious,  capable  boy  who  walks  bare- 
f ooted  into  the  city,  and  at  the  end  of  twenty 
years  has  outdistanced  his  country  scliool- 
mates,  becoming  a  multi-millionaire  while 
they  are  still  farm  drudges,  is  the  example  of 
American  opportunity.  But  this  ability  to 
separate  one's  seif  from  the  rest  of  one's 
fellows  and  attain  individual  greatness  is 
rarely  possible  to  a  segregated  race.  In 
domestic  service  individual  colored  men  have 
shown  ambition  and  high  capability,  but 
they  have  never  been  able  to  get  away  from 
their  fellows  like  the  country  boy  —  to  leave 
the  farm  drudges  and  take  a  place  among  the 
most  proficient  of  their  profession.  They 
must  always  work  in  a  race  group.  And  this 
Negro  group  is  like  the  small  College  that 
tries  to  win  at  football  against  a  competitor 
with  four  times  the  number  of  students  and 


EARNING  A  LIVING  95 

a  better  coach.  The  two  hundred  colored 
waiters,  competing  against  the  eight  hundred  ^^ 
white  ones,  lose  in  the  game  and  are  given  a  ^c^/j^^ 
second  place,  which  the  best  must  accept 
with  the  worst.  When,  then,  we  criticize  a 
capable  colored  man  for  failing  to  keep  a 
superior  position  we  must  remember  that 
he  is  tied  to  his  group  and  has  little  chance 
of  advancement  on  his  individual  merit. 

The  census  division  of  mechanical  pur- 
suits  shows  only  a  f ew  colored  men  working  at 
trades,  and  the  paucity  of  the  numbers  is  of ten 
attributed  by  the  Negro  to  a  third  obstacle 
in  the  way  of  his  progress,  the  trade-union. 

To  the  colored  man  who  has  overcome  race 
prejudice  sufficiently  to  be  taken  into  a  shop 
with  white  workmen,  the  Walking  delegate 
who  appears  and  asks  for  his  union  card 
seems  little  short  of  diabolical;  and  all  the 
advantages  that  collective  bargaining  has 
secured,  the  higher  wage  and  shorter  working- 
day,  are  forgotten  by  him.  I  have  heard 
the  most  distinguished  of  Negro  educators, 
listening  to  such  an  incident  as  this,  declare 
that  he  should  like  to  see  every  labor  union 
in   America   destroyed.     But   unionism   has 


96  HALF  A  MAN 

come  to  stay,  and  the  colored  man  who  is 
asked  for  his  card  had  better  at  once  get  to 
work  and  endeavor  to  secure  it.  Many  have 
done  this  already,  and  organized  labor  in 
New  York,  its  leaders  teil  us,  receives  an 
increasing  number  of  colored  workmen.  Miss 
Helen  Tucker,  in  a  careful  study  of  Negro 
craftsmen  in  the  West  Sixties/  found  among 
121  men  who  had  worked  at  their  trades  in 
the  city,  32,  or  26  per  cent  in  organized  labor. 
The  majority  of  these  had  joined  in  New 
York.  Eight  men,  out  of  the  121,  had 
applied  for  entrance  to  unions  and  not  been 
admitted.  This  does  not  seem  a  discourag- 
ing  number,  though  we  do  not  know  whether 
the  other  81  could  have  been  organized  or 
not.  Many,  probably,  were  not  sufficiently 
competent  workmen.  In  1910,  according  to 
the  best  information  that  I  could  secure, 
there  were  1358  colored  men  in  the  New 
York  unions.  Eighty  of  these  were  in  the 
building  trades,  165  were  cigar  makers,  400 
were  teamsters,  350  asphalt  workers,  and 
240  rock-drillers  and  tool  sharpeners.^ 

*  Southern  Workman,  October,  1907,  to  March,  1908. 
'  See  foot-note  on  opposite  page. 


EARNING  A  LIVING  97 

Entrance  to  some  of  the  local  organiza- 
tions  is  more  easily  secured  than  to  others, 
for  the  trade-union,  while  part  of  a  federa- 
tion,  is  autonomous,  or  nearly  so.     In  some 

2  In  1906,  and  again  in  1910,  I  secured  a  counting  of  the 
New  York  colored  men  in  organized  labor.  The  lists  run  as 
follows: 

1906  1910 

Asphalt  workers 320  350 

Teamsters   300  400 

Rock-drillers  and  tool  sharpeners.  250  240 

Cigar  makers 121  165 

Bricklayers    90  21 

Waiters 90  not  obtainable 

Carpenters 60  40 

Piasterers 45  19 

Double  drum  hoisters    30  37 

Safety  and  portable  engineers    ...  26  35 

Eccentric  firemen 15  0 

Letter  carriers 10  30 

Pressmen 10  not  obtainable 

Printers    6  8 

Butchers 3  8 

Lathers 3  7 

Painters 3  not  obtainable 

Coopers   1  2 

Sheet  metal  workers 1  1 

Rockmen 1  not  obtainable 

Total 1385  1358 

The  large  number  of  bricklayers  in  1906  is  questioned  by 

the  man,  himself  a  bricklayer,  who  made  the  second  counting. 
However,  the  number  greatly  decreased  in  1908  when  the 
Stagnation  in  business  compelled  many  men  to  seek  work  in 
other  cities. 


98  HALF  A  MAN 

of  the  highly  skilled  trades,  to  which  few 
colored  men  have  the  necessary  ability  to 
demand  access,  the  Negro  is  likely  to  be 
refused,  while  the  less  intelhgent  and  well- 
paid  forms  of  labor  press  a  union  card  upon 
him.  Again,  strong  organizations  in  the 
South,  as  the  bricklayers,  send  men  North 
with  Union  membership,  who  easily  transfer 
to  New  York  locals.  Miss  Tucker  finds  the 
carpenters',  masons',  and  piasterers'  organi- 
zations easy  for  the  Negro  to  enter.  There 
is  in  New  York  a  colored  local,  the  only 
colored  local  in  the  city,  among  a  few  of  the 
carpenters,  with  regulär  representation  in 
the  Central  Federated  Union.  The  Ameri- 
can Federation  of  Labor  in  1881  declared 
that  "the  working  people  must  unite  irre- 
spective  of  creed,  color,  sex,  nationality,  or 
politics."  This  cry  is  for  seif -protection,  and 
where  the  Negroes  have  numbers  and  ability 
in  a  trade,  their  Organization  becomes  im- 
portant  to  the  white.  It  may  be  fairly  said 
of  labor  Organization  in  New  York  that  it 
finds  and  is  at  times  unable  to  destroy  race 
prejudice,  but  that  it  does  not  create  it.^ 

*  The  comment  of  the  Negro  bricklayer  who  secured  my 


EARNING  A  LIVING  99 

A  fourth  obstacle,  and  a  very  important 
one,  is  the  lack  of  opportunity  f or  the  colored 
boy.  The  only  trade  that  he  can  easily  learn 
is  that  of  stationary  engineer,  an  occupation 
at  which  the  Negroes  do  very  well.  Colored 
boys  in  small  numbers  are  attending  evening 
trade  schools,  but  their  chance  of  securing 
positions  on  graduation  will  be  small.  The 
Negro  youth  who  is  not  talented  enough  to 
enter  a  profession,  and  who  cannot  get  into 

figures  is  important.  "A  Negro,"  he  says,  "has  to  be  extra 
fit  in  his  trade  to  retain  his  membership,  as  the  eyes  of  all  the 
other  workers  are  watching  every  opportunity  to  disqualify 
bim,  thereby  compelling  a  superefficiency.  Yet  at  all  times 
he  is  the  last^to  conae  and  the  first  to^o  on  the  job,  necessi- 
talinghis  seeking  other  work  for  a  living,  and  keeping  up  his 
Card  being  but  a  matter  of  sentiment.  While  all  the  skilled 
trades  seem  willing  to  accept  the  Negro  with  his  travelling 
Card,  yet  there  are  some  which  utterly  refuse  him;  for  instance, 
the  house  smiths  and  bridge  men  who  will  not  recognize  him 
at  all.  While  membership  in  the  union  is  necessary  to  work, 
yet  the  hardest  part  of  the  battle  is  to  secure  employment. 
In  some  instances  intercession  has  been  made  by  various^ 
organizationsjnterested  in  his  industrial  progress  for  employ- 
ment at  the  Offices  of  various  companies,  and  favorable 
answers  are  given,  but  hostile  foremen  with  discretionary 
power  carry  out  their  instructions  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
render  his  employment  of  such  short  duration  that  he  is  very 
little  benefited.  Of  course,  "theTe~äT5  some  contractors  who 
are  very  friendly  to  a  few  men,  and  whenever  any  work  is 
done  by  them,  they  are  certain  of  employment.  Unfortu- 
nately,  these  are  too  few." 


100  HALF  A  MAN 

the  city  or  government  Service,  has  slight 
opportunity.  Nothing  is  so  discouraging  in 
the  outlook  in  New  York  as  the  crowding 
out  of  colored  boys  from  congenial  remuner- 
ative  work. 

The  last  obstaele  in  the  way  of  the  Negro's 
advancement  into  higher  occupations  is  his 
inefficiency.  Race  prejudice  denies  him  the 
opportunity  to  prove  his  ability  in  many 
occupations,  and  the  same  spirit  forces  him 
to  work  in  a  race  group;  but  the  colored  men 
themselves  are  often  unfitted  for  any  labor 
other  than  that  they  undertake. 

The  picture  that  is  sometimes  drawn  of 
many  thousands  of  highly  skilled  Southern 
colored  men  forced  in  New  York  to  give  up 
their  trades  and  to  turn  to  menial  labor 
is  not  a  correct  one.  Richard  R.  Wright, 
Jr.,  who  has  made  a  careful  study  of  the 
Negro  in  Philadelphia,^  finds  that  the  ma- 
jority  of  colored  men  who  come  to  that  city 
are  from  the  class  of  unskilled  city  laborers 
and  country  hands;  the  minority  are  the 
more  skilful  artisans  and  farmers  and  domes- 

*  R.  R.  Wright,  Jr.'s  "Migration  of  Negroes  to  the  North," 
Annals  of  the  American  Academy,  May,  1906. 


EARNING  Ä  i;rVING       '    löl 

tic   servants,    with   a   number   also   of   the 
vagrant  and  criminal  classes. 

In  New  York  the  untrained  Negroes  not 
only  form  a  very  large  class,  but  Coming  in 
eontact,  as  they  do,  with  foreigners  who  for 
generations  have  been  forced  to  severe,  iin- 
remitting  toil,  they  suffer  by  comparison. 
The  South  in  the  days  of  slavery  demanded 
chiefly  routine  work  in  the  fields  from  its 
Negroes.^  The  work  was  under  the  direc- 
tion  either  of  the  master,  the  overseer,  or  a 
foreman;  and  there  has  been  no  general 
advance  in  training  for  the  colored  men  of 
the  South  since  that  time.  Contrast  the 
intensive  cultivation  of  Italy  or  Switzerland 
with  the  farms  of  Georgia  or  Alabama,  or 
the  hoteis  of  France  with  those  of  Virginia, 
and  you  will  see  the  disadvantages  from 
which  the  Negro  suffers.  America  is  young 
and  crude,  but  opportunity  has  brought  to 
her  great  cities  workmen  from  all  over  the 
World.  In  New  York  these  men  are  driven 
at  a  pace  that  at  the  outset  distracts  the 
colored  man  who  prefers  his  leisurely  way. 

*  See  Ulrich  B.  Phillips'  "Origin  and  Growth  of  the  South- 
ern Black  Belts,"  American  Historical  Review,  July,  1906. 


10^  -HALF  A  MAN 

Moreover,  the  foreign  workmen  have  learned 
persistence;  they  are  punctual  and  appear 
regularly  each  morning  at  their  tasks.  "The 
Italians  are  better  laborers  than  any  other 
people  we  have,  are  they  not?"  I  asked  a 
man  famihar  with  many  races  and  national- 
ities.  "No,"  was  his  answer,  "they  do  not 
work  better  than  others,  but  when  the 
whistle  blows,  they  are  always  there."  Mr. 
Stone,  whose  book  I  have  already  quoted  a 
number  of  times,  shows  the  irresponsible, 
fanciful  wanderings  of  his  Mississippi  tenants, 
whom  he  endeavored,  unsuccessfully,  to  es- 
tabhsh  in  a  permanent  tenantry.  The  colored 
men  in  New  York  are  far  in  advance  of  these 
farm  hands,  who  are  described  as  moving 
about  simply  because  they  desire  a  change, 
but  they  are  also  far  from  the  steady,  un- 
swerving  attitude  of  their  foreign  competi- 
tors.  Inadequately  educated,  too  often  they 
come  to  New  York  with  little  equipment  for 
tasks  they  must  undertake  successfully  or 
starve  —  unless,  puerile,  they  live  by  the 
labor  of  some  industrious  woman. 

I  have  tried  to  depict  the  New  York  colored 
wage  earners  as  they  labor  in  the  city  today. 


EARNING  A  LIVING  103 

They  are  not  a  remarkable  group,  and  were 
they  white  men,  distinguished  by  some  mark 
of  nationality,  they  would  pass  without 
comment.  But  the  Negro  is  on  trial,  and 
witnesses  are  continually  called  to  teil  of 
his  failures  and  successes.  We  have  seen 
that  both  in  the  attitude  of  the  world  about 
him,  and  in  his  own  untutored  seif,  there 
are  many  obstacles  to  prevent  his  advance; 
and  his  natural  sensitiveness  adds  to  these 
difficulties.  He  minds  the  coarse  but  often 
good-natured  joke  of  his  fellow  laborer,  and 
he  remembers  with  a  lasting  pain  the  morti- 
fication  of  an  employer's  curt  refusal  of 
work.  Had  he  the  obtuseness  of  some 
Americans  he  would  prosper  better.  As  we 
have  seen,  many  positions  are  completely 
closed  to  him,  leading  him  to  idleness  and 
consequent  crime.  Just  as  not  every  able- 
bodied  white  man,  who  is  out  of  work  and 
impoverished,  will  go  to  the  charities  wood- 
yard  and  saw  wood,  so  not  every  colored 
man  will  accept  the  menial  labor  which  may 
be  the  only  work  open  to  him.  Instead,  he 
may  gamble  or  drift  into  a  vagabond  life. 
A  well-known  Philadelphia  judge  has  said 


104  HALF  A  MAN 

that  "The  moral  and  intellectual  advance 
of  a  race  is  governed  by  the  degree  of  its 
industrial  freedom.  When  that  freedom  is 
restricted  there  is  unbounded  tendency  to 
drive  the  race  discriminated  against  into  the 
ranks  of  the  criminal."  Discrimination  in 
New  York  has  led  many  Negroes  into  these 
ranks.  But  as  we  look  back  at  the  occupa- 
tions  of  our  colored  men  we  see  a  large  num- 
ber  who  secure  regulär  hours,  and  if  a  poor, 
yet  a  fairly  steady  pay.  For  the  mass  of  the 
Negroes  coming  into  the  city  these  positions 
are  an  advance  over  their  former  work. 
Employment  in  a  great  mercantile  estabhsh- 
ment,  though  it  be  in  the  basement,  carries 
dignity  with  it,  and  educating  demands  of 
punctuaHty,  sobriety,  and  swiftness.  Rich- 
ard R.  Wright,  Jr.,  whose  right  to  speak  with 
authority  we  have  aheady  noted,  believes 
that  the  "North  has  taught  the  Negro  the 
value  of  money;  of  economy;  it  has  taught 
more  sustained  effort  in  work,  punctuaHty, 
and  regularity."  It  has  also,  I  believe,  in 
its  more  regulär  hours  of  work,  aided  in  the 
upbuilding  of  the  home. 

I  remember  once  waiting  in  the  harbor  of 


EARNING  A  LIVING  105 

Genoa  while  our  ship  was  taking  on  a  cargo. 
The  captain  walked  the  deck  impatiently, 
and,  as  the  Itahans  went  in  leisurely  fashion 
about  their  task,  declared,  "If  I  had  those 
men  in  New  York  I  could  get  twice  the 
amount  of  work  out  of  them."  That  is  what 
New  York  does;  it  works  men  hard  and  fast; 
sometimes  it  mars  them;  but  it  pays  a  better 
wage  than  Genoa,  and  there  is  an  excitement 
and  dash  about  it  that  attracts  laborers  from 
all  parts  of  the  earth.  The  black  men  come, 
insignificant  in  numbers,  ready  to  do  their 
part.  They  work  and  play  and  marry  and 
bring  up  children,  and  as  we  watch  them 
moving  to  and  from  their  tasks  the  North 
seems  to  have  brought  to  the  majority  of 
them  something  of  liberty  and  happiness. 


CHAPTER  V 

Earning  a  Living  —  Business  and 
THE  Professions 

If  we  walk  west  on  Fifty-ninth  Street, 
at  Eighth  Avenue,  we  come  upon  one  of  the 
colored  business  sections  of  New  York. 
Here,  for  a  block's  length,  are  employment 
and  real  estate  agents,  restaurant  keepers, 
grocers,  tailors,  barbers,  printers,  express- 
men,  and  undertakers,  all  small  establish- 
ments  occupying  the  first  floor  or  basement 
of  some  tenement  or  lodging  house,  and  with 
the  exception  of  the  employment  agency  all 
patronized  chiefly  by  the  colored  race. 
Another  such  section  and  a  more  prosperous 
one  is  in  Harlem,  on  West  One  Hundred 
and  Thirty-third,  One  Hundred  and  Thirty- 
fourth,  and  One  Hundred  and  Thirty-fifth 
Streets.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  whole 
business  of  the  city  such  concerns  are  insig- 
nificant,  but  they  are  important  from  the 
106 


EARNING  A  LIVING  107 

viewpoint  of  Negro  progress,  since  they 
represent  the  accumulation  of  capital,  ex- 
perience  in  business  methods,  and  hard 
work.  Very  slowly  the  New  York  Negro 
is  meeting  the  demanding  power  of  his 
people  and  is  securing  neighborhood  trade 
that  has  formerly  gone  to  the  Italian  and 
the  Jew.  Husband  and  wife,  father  and  son, 
work  in  their  Httle  establishments  and  make 
a  beginning  in  the  mercantile  world. 

The  Negro,  as  we  have  seen,  has  con- 
ducted  businesses  in  New  York  in  the  past, 
businesses  patronized  chiefly  by  whites. 
Barbering  and  catering  were  his  successes, 
and  in  both  of  these  he  has  lost,  despite  the 
fact  that  one  of  the  city's  wealthiest  colored 
men  is  a  caterer.  But  if  he  has  lost  here, 
he  has  gained  along  other  lines.  Among  a 
number  of  photographers  he  has  one  who  is 
well-known  for  his  excellent  architectural 
work.  Two  manufacturers  have  brought 
out  populär  goods,  the  Haynes's  razor  strop, 
and  the  Howard  shoe  polish.  These  men, 
one  a  barber  and  one  a  Pullman  car  porter, 
improved  upon  implements  used  in  their 
daily   work   and   then   turned   to   manufac- 


108  HALF  A  MAN 

ture.  The  headquarters  of  the  Howard 
shoe  polish  is  in  Chicago,  where  the  firm 
employs  thirty  people,  the  New  York  branch 
giving  employment  to  twelve. 

A  wise  utilization  of  labor  already  trained 
and  at  hand  is  seen  in  the  Manhattan  House 
Cleaning  and  Renovating  Bureau.  This 
firm  contracts  for  the  cleaning  of  houses 
and  places  of  business  and  has  also  been 
successful  in  securing  work  on  new  buildings, 
entering  as  the  builders  leave  and  arranging 
everything  for  occupancy.  In  one  week  the 
Bureau  has  given  employment  to  sixty  men. 

In  those  businesses  in  which  he  comes  in 
contact  with  the  white,  the  most  pronounced 
success  of  the  colored  man  has  been  real  es- 
tate  brokerage.  The  New  York  Negro  busi- 
ness directory  names  twenty-two  real  estate 
brokers,  and  though  a  dozen  of  them  prob- 
ably  handle  altogether  no  more  business 
than  one  white  firm,  a  few  put  through  im- 
portant  Operations.  The  ablest  of  these 
brokers,  recently  Clearing  twenty  thousand 
dollars  at  a  single  transaction,  turned  his 
Operations  to  Liberia,  where  he  went  for 
a  few  months  to  look  into  land  concessions. 


EARNING  A  LIVING  109 

This  broker  has  aided  the  Negroes  materi- 
ally  in  their  efforts  to  rent  apartments  on 
better  streets.  His  energy,  and  that  of  many 
more  like  him,  is  also  needed  to  open  up 
places  for  colored  businesses.  better  office 
and  workroom  facilities  for  the  able  pro- 
fessional and  business  men  and  women.  In 
New  York  as  in  the  South  the  Negro  needs 
to  obtain  a  hold  upon  the  land.  In  this  he 
is  aided  not  only  by  his  brokers,  but  by 
realty  companies.  The  largest  of  these,  the 
Metropolitan  Realty  Company,  in  Opera- 
tion since  1900,  is  capitalized  at  a  million 
dollars,  and  had  in  1910  $400,000  paid  in 
stock,  and  $400,000  subscribed  and  being 
paid  for  on  instalment.  This  Company  oper- 
ates  in  the  suburban  towns,  and  has  quite 
a  colony  in  Plainfield,  New  Jersey,  where  it 
owns  150  lots.  It  has  built  eighty  cottages 
for  its  members,  and  has  bought  eighteen. 
Among  the  businesses  that  cater  directly 
to  the  colored,  probably  none  is  more  suc- 
cessful  than  undertaking.  The  Negroes  of 
the  city  die  in  great  numbers,  and  the  fu- 
ner al  is  all  too  common  a  function.  Formerly 
this  business  went  to  white  men,  but  in- 


110  HALF  A  MAN 

creasingly  it  is  Coming  into  the  hands  of  the 
colored.  The  Negro  business  directory  gives 
twenty-two  undertakers,  one  of  them,  by 
common  report,  the  richest  colored  man  in 
New  York.  Profitable  real  estate  invest- 
ment,  combined  with  one  of  the  largest 
undertaking  establishments  in  the  city,  has 
given  him  a  comfortable  fortune.  Another 
large  and  increasingly  important  Negro  busi- 
ness is  the  hotel  and  boarding-house.  As 
the  colored  men  of  the  South  and  West  ac- 
cumulate  wealth,  they  will  come  in  increas- 
ing  numbers  to  visit  in  New  York,  and  the 
colored  hotel,  now  little  more  tjian  a  board- 
ing-house, may  become  a  spacious  building, 
with  private  baths,  elevator  service,  and  a 
well-equipped  restaurant.  In  today's  mod- 
estly  equipped  buildings  the  catering  is  often 
excellent,  and  good,  well-cooked  food  is  sold 
at  reasonable  prices.  Occasionally  the  Hotel 
Maceo  advertises  a  southern  dinner,  and  its 
guests  sit  down  to  Virginia  sugar-cured  ham, 
sweet  potato  pie,  and  perhaps  even  opossum. 
Printing    establishments,    tailors'    shops,^ 

*  On  West  133d  Street  two  former  Hampton  students  have 
a  prosperous  little  tailor  and  upholstering  shop. 


EARNING  A  LIVING  111 

express  and  van  companies,  and  many  other 
small  enterprises  help  to  make  up  the  Negro 
business  world.  One  colored  printer  brings 
out  an  important  white  magazine.  There 
are  seven  weekly  colored  newspapers,  of 
which  the  New  York  Age  is  the  most  impor- 
tant, and  two  musical  Publishing  companies. 
All  these  enterprises  are  useful,  not  only  to 
the  proprietor  and  his  patrons,  but  especially 
to  the  Clerks  and  assistants  who  thus  are 
able  to  secure  some  training  in  mercantile 
work.  In  the  white  man's  office,  white  and 
colored  boys  start  out  together,  but  as  their 
trousers  lengthenand  their  ambitions  quicken, 
the  former  secures  promotion  while  the  lat- 
ter is  still  given  the  letters  to  put  into  the 
mail  box.  If  the  Negro  lad,  discouraged  at 
lack  of  advancement,  leaves  the  white  man 
and  ventures  with  a  tiny  capital  into  some 
business  of  his  own,  his  ignorance  is  almost 
certain  to  lead  to  his  disaster.  He  is  indeed 
fortunate  if  he  can  first  work  in  the  ofBce 
of  a  successful  colored  man.^ 

1  Those  interested  in  the  Negro  in  business  should  look 
for  an  intensive  study,  shortly  to  be  published,  on  the  wage- 
earners  and  business  enterprises  araong  Negroes  in  New  York. 
It  is  entitled  "  The  Negro  at  Work  in  New  York  City,"  and 


112 


HALF  A  MAN 


We  have  one  more  census  division  to 
consider,  Professional  Service.  The  table 
runs  as  follows: 

Professional  Service 


Total 
number 
of  males 
in  each 
occupa- 

tion. 


Number 

of  negroes 

in  eacii 

occupa- 

tion. 


Number  of 
Negroes  to 
each  1000 
workers  in 
occupa- 
tion. 


Actors,  professional  showmen,  etc. 
Architects,  designers,  draftsmen  . . 

Artists,  teachers  of  art 

Clergymen    

Dentists    

Physicians  and  surgeons 

Veterinary  surgeons    

Electricians 

Engineers  (civil)  and  surveyors  .  .  . 

Journalists    

Lawyers    

Literary  and  scientific 

Musicians 

Officials  (government)    

Teachers  and  professors  in  Colleges 

Total  including  some  occupa- 

tions  not  specified    


4,733 
3,966 
2,924 
2,833 
1,509 
6,577 
320 
8,131 
3,321 
2,833 
7,811 
1,709 
6,429 
3,934 
3,409 

60,853 


254 

2 

13 

90 

25 

32 

2 

18 

7 

7 

26 

10 

195 

9 

32 

729 


54 
0 
4 

32 

16 
5 
6 
2 
2 
2 
3 
5 

30 
2 
9 

12 


Examining  these  figures  we  find  few  col- 
ored   architects^  or  engineers,   and   a  very 

has  been  made  by  George  E.  Haynes,  under  the  direction  of 
the  Bureau  of  Social  Research  of  the  New  York  School  of 
Philanthropy. 

*  Since  going  to  press  the  new  and  very  beautiful  building 


EARNING  A  LIVING  113 

small     Proportion     of     electricians,    though 

among  the  latter  there  is  a  highly  skilled 

workman.     The  New  York  Negro  has  no 

Position  in  the  mechanical  arts.     It  may  be 

that,  as  we  so  often  hear,  the  African  does 

not    possess    mechanical    ability.^     You    do 

not  see  Negro  boys  pottering  ?)ver  machin- 

ery  or  making  toy  inventions  of  their  own. 

But  another  and   powerful   reason   for  the 

colored    youth's    failing    to    take    up    engi- 

neering    or    kindred    studies    is    the    slight 

chance    he    would    later    have    in    securing 

work.     No  group  of  men  in  America  have 

opposed  his  progrigsIliIöfö"pcr3i3tcfttly^^^^aa 

sTaHerTmec^h^Tiir^t  ^^d,  should  he  graduate 

from  some  school  of  technology,  he  would        , ,  Lv-v\ 

be   refused   in   office   or   Workshop.     So   he 


of  St.  Philips'  Episcopal  Church,  on  W.  134th  Street,  has  been 
opened.  This  is  a  fine  example  of  EngHsh  Gothic  and  its 
architects  are  two  young  colored  men,  one  of  whom  was  for 
years  in  the  oflSce  of  a  white  firm. 

^  Mary  Kingsley  has  some  interesting  generalizations  on 
this  point.  She  speaks  of  the  African  mind  approaching  all 
things  from  a  spiritual  point  of  view  while  the  English  mind 
approaches  them  from  a  material  point  of  view,  and  of 
"the  high  perception  of  justice  you  will  find  in  the  Af- 
rican, combined  with  the  inability  to  think  out  a  puUey  or 
a  lever  except  under  white  tuition."  —  West  African  Studies, 
p.  330. 


114  HALF  A  MAN 

turns  to  those  professions  in  which  he  sees 
aHteliEöod  öf  advancemenL. 

Colored  physicians  and  dentists  are  increas- 
ing  in  number  in  New  York  and  throughout 
the  country.  The  Negro  is  sympathetic,  quick 
to  understand  another's  feelings,  and  when 
added  to  this  he  has  received  a  thorough 
medical  training  he  makes  an  excellent 
physician.  New  York  State  examinations 
prevent  the  practice  of  ignorant  doctors  from 
other  States,  and  the  city  can  count  many 
able  colored  practit ioners.  These  doctors 
practise  among  white  people  as  well  as  among 
colored.  As  surgeons  they  are  handicapped 
in  New  York  by  lack  of  hospital  facilities, 
having  no  suitable  place  in  which  they  may 
perform  an  Operation.  The  colored  student 
who  graduates  from  a  New  York  medical 
College  must  go  for  hospital  training  to  Phil- 
adelphia or  Chicago  or  Washington.^ 

*  Lincoln  Hospital  in  New  York,  while  receiving  white  and 
colored  patients,  was  especially  designed  to  help  the  colored 
race.  It  has  a  training  school  for  colored  nurses,  but  neither 
accepts  colored  medical  graduates  as  interns,  nor  allows 
colored  doctors  upon  its  staff .  This  is  one  of  many  cases  in 
which  the  good  white  people  of  the  city  are  glad  to  assist  the 
poor  and  ailing  Negro,  but  are  unwilling  to  help  the  strong 
and  ambitious  colored  man  to  füll  opportunity. 


EARNING  A  LIVING  115 

Colored  lawyers  are  obtaining  a  firm  foot- 
hold  in  New  York.  From  twenty-six  in 
the  1900  census  they  now,  in  1911,  number 
over  fifty,  though  not  all  of  these  by  any 
means  rely  entirely  upon  their  profession 
for  Support.  Some  of  our  lawyers  are 
descendants  of  old  New  York  families, 
others  have  come  here  recently  from  the 
South. 

Turning  to  our  census  figures  again  we 
see  that  the  three  professions  in  which  the 
colored  man  is  conspicuous  are  those  of 
actor,  musician,  and  minister.  Instead  of 
the  average  eighteen,  he  here  shows  fifty- 
four  in  every  thousand  actors,  thirty  in 
every  thousand  musicians,  and  thirty-two 
in  every  thousand  clergymen.  And  since 
the  pulpit  and  the  stage  are  two  places  in 
which  the  black  man  has  found  conspicu- 
ous success  it  may  be  well  in  this  connec- 
tion  to  consider,  not  only  the  economic 
significance  of  these  institutions,  but  their 
place  in  the  life  of  the  colored  world. 

The  Negro  minister  was  born  with  the 
Negro  Christian,  and  the  colored  church, 
in  which  he  might  teil  of  salvation,  is  over 


116  HALF  A  MAN 

a  Century  old  in  New  York.  Today  the 
Boroughs  of  Manhattan  and  Brooklyn  have 
twenty-eight  colored  churches  besides  a 
number  of  missions.  Some  of  the  societies 
own  valuable  property,  usually,  however, 
encumbered  with  heavy  mortgages,  and 
yearly  budgets  mount  up  to  ten,  twelve, 
and  sixteen  thousand  dollars.  The  Metho- 
dist churches  lead  in  number,  next  come 
the  Baptist,  and  next  the  Episcopahan. 
There  are  Methodist  Episcopal,  African 
Methodist  Episcopal,  and  African  Metho- 
dist Episcopal  Zion.  Bethel  African  Metho- 
dist Episcopal  Church,  as  we  have  seen,  is 
one  of  the  oldest  and  is  still  one  of  the 
largest  and  most  useful  Negro  churches  in 
New  York.  Mount  Olivet,  a  Baptist  church 
on  West  Fifty-third  Street,  has  a  seating 
capacity  of  1600,  taxed  to  its  füll  on  Sun- 
day  evenings.  St.  Philip 's  gives  the  Epis- 
copal Service  with  dignity  and  devoutness, 
and  its  choir  has  many  sweet  colored  boy 
singers.  At  St.  Benedict,  the  Moor,  the 
black  faces  of  the  boy  acolytes  contrast 
with  the  benignant  white-haired  Irish  priest, 
and  without    need    of    words   preach    good- 


EARNING  A  LIVING  117 

will  to  men.  Only  in  this  Catholic  church 
does  one  find  white  and  black  in  almost 
equal  numbers  worshipping  side  by  side. 

The  great  majority  of  the  colqred  churches 
are  supported  by  their  congregations,  and 
the  minister  or  eider,  or  both,  twice  a  Sun- 
day,  must  call  for  the  pennies  and  nickeis, 
dimes  and  quarters,  that  are  dropped  into 
the  plate  at  the  pulpit's  base.  Contribu- 
tors  file  past  the  table  on  which  they  place 
their  offering,  emulation  becoming  a  spur 
to  generosity.  These  collections  are  sup- 
plemented  by  sums  raised  at  entertainments 
and  fairs,  and  it  is  in  this  way,  by  the 
constant  securing  of  small  gifts,  that  the 
thousands  are  raised. 

The  church  is  a  busy  place  and  retains 
its  members,  not  only  by  its  preaching,  but 
by  midweek  meetings.  There  are  the  class 
meetings  of  the  Methodists,  the  young  peo- 
ple's  societies,  the  prayer  meetings,  and 
the  sermons  preached  to  the  secret  benefit 
organizations.  Visiting  sisters  and  brothers 
attend  to  relief  work,  and  standing  at  a 
side  table,  sometimes  picturesque  with  lighted 
lantern,  ask  for  dolefor  the  poor. 


118  HALF  A  MAN 

The  Sunday-schools,  while  not  so  large 
as  the  church  attendance  would  lead  one 
to  expect,  involve  much  time  and  labor  in 
their  conduct.  A  colored  church  member 
finds  all  his  or  her  leisure  occupied  in  church 
work.  I  know  a  young  woman  engaged  in 
an  exacting,  skilled  profession  who  spends 
her  day  of  rest  attending  morning  service, 
teaching  in  Sunday-school,  taking  part  in 
the  young  people's  lyceum  in  the  late  after- 
noon,  and  listening  to  a  second  sermon  in 
the  evening.  Occasionally  she  omits  her 
dinner  to  hear  an  address  at  the  colored 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association.  On 
hot  Summer  afternoons  you  may  see  colored 
boys  and  girls  and  men  and  women  crowded 
in  an  ill-ventilated  hall,  giving  ear  to  a  fer- 
vid  exhortation  that  leads  the  Speaker,  at 
the  sentence's  end,  to  mop  his  swarthy  face. 
The  woods,  the  salt-smelling  sea,  the  tamer 
prettiness  of  the  lawns  of  the  city's  park, 
have  not  the  impelling  call  of  sermon  or 
hymn.  If  the  whole  of  the  Negro's  summer 
Sunday  is  to  be  given  to  direct  religious 
teaching,  one  wishes  that  it  might  take 
place  at  the  old  time  camp  meeting,  where 


EARNING  A  LIVING  119 

there  is  fresh  air  and  space  in  which  to 
breathe  it.  The  first  of  Edward  Everett 
Hale's  three  rules  of  life  as  he  gave  them 
to  the  Hampton  students  was,  "Live  all 
you  can  out  in  the  open  air."  The  relig- 
ious-minded  New  York  Negro  succumbs 
easily  to  disease,  and  yet  elects  to  spend 
his  day  of  leisure  within  doors. 

With  the  exception  of  the  Episcopalians, 
the  churches  undertake  little  institutional 
work:_Ji£QiiexjiiIIi^IÖliI^ändr"^^^ 
a  feeble  conviction  of  the  value  of  the  gymna- 
sium,  pool  table,  and  girls'  and  boys'  cliibs. 
The  colored  branches  of  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association,  however,  are  places 
for  recreation  and  instruction.  The  lines 
that  Evangelical  Americans  draw  regarding 
amusements,  prohibiting  cards  and  wel- 
coming  dominos,  allowing  bagatelle  and 
frowning  upon  billiards,  must  be  interpreted 
by  some  folk-lore  historian  to  show  their 
reasonableness.  Doubtless  the  extent  to 
which  a  game  is  used  for  gambling  purposes 
has  much  to  do  with  its  good  or  bad  savor, 
and  pool  and  cards  for  this  reason  are 
tabooed.     Dancing    is    also    frowned    upon 


120  HALF  A  MAN 

by  many  of  the  churches,  while  temperance 
societies  make  active  campaign  for  prohi- 
bition.  To  New  York's  black  folk,  the 
church-goers  and  they  who  stand  without 
are  the  sheep  and  the  goats,  and  the  gulf 
between  them  is  digged  deep. 

Of  the  five  colored  Episcopal  churches,  St^ 
Phihp's  and  St.  Cyprian's  have  parish  bouses, 
St.  Phihp's  has  moved  into  a  new  parish 
house  on  West  One  Hundred  and  Thirty- 
Fourth  Street,  where  with  its  large,  well- 
arranged  rooms,  its  gymnasium,  and  its  corps 
of  enthusiastic  workers  it  will  soon  become 
a  powerful  force  in  the  Harlem  Negro's  life. 
St.  Cyprian's  is  under  the  City  Episcopal 
Mission,  and  has  unusual  opportunity  for 
helpfulness  since  it  is  separated  only  by 
Amsterdam  Avenue  from  the  San  Juan.  Hill 

district   and   y et   Stands   amid   the wMtes. 

Its  clubs  and  classes,  its  employment  agency, 
its  gymnasium,  its  luncheons  for  school 
children,  its  beautiful  church,  are  all  prima- 
rily  for  the  Negroes;  but  the  colored  rector 
has  a  friendly  word  for  his  white  neighbors, 
tow-headed  Irish  and  German  boys  and  girls 
sit   upon   his   steps,    and   his   ministry   has 


EARNING  A  LIVING  121 

lessened  the  belligerent  feeling  between  the 
east  and  the  west  sides  of  Amsterdam 
Avenue.  St.  David's  Episcopal  Church  in 
the  Bronx  has  a  fresh  air  home  at  White 
Plains,  cared  for  personally  by  the  rector 
and  his  wife,  who  spend  their  vacation  with 
tenement  mothers  and  their  children,  the 
tired  but  grateful  recipients  of  their  good- 
will. 

If  there  were  ninety  colored  clergymen 
in  New  York  in  1900,  as  the  census  says,  a 
number  must  have  been  without  churches, 
itinerant  preachers  or  directors  of  small 
missions,  supporting  themselves  by  other 
labor  during  the  day.  Those  men  who  now 
fill  the  pulpits  of  well-estabhshed  churches 
have  been  trained  in  theological  schools  of 
good  Standing,  for  the  ignorant  "darky"  of 
the  story  who  leaves  the  hot  work  of  the 
cotton  field  because  he  feels  a  "call"  to 
preach  does  not  receive  another  from  New 
York.  The  colored  minister  in  this  city 
works  hard  and  long,  and  finds  a  wearying 
number  of  demands  upon  his  time.  The 
wedding  and  the  funeral,  the  word  of  coun- 
sel  to  the  young,  and  of  comfort  to  the  aged. 


122  HALF  A  MAN 

a  multiplicity  of  meetings,  two  sermons 
every  Sunday,  the  continual  strain  of  rais- 
ing  money,  these  are  some  of  his  duties. 
With  a  day  from  f ourteen  to  seventeen  hours 
long  he  earns  as  few  men  earn  the  meagre 
salary  put  into  his  hand.  But  his  position 
among  his  people  is  a  commanding  öne,  and 
carries  with  it  respect  and  responsibihty. 

Strangers  who  visit  colored  churches  to 
be  amused  by  the  vociferations  of  the 
preacher  and  the  responses  of  the  eongre- 
gation  will  be  disappointed  in  New  York. 
Others,  however,  who  attend,  desiring  to 
understand  the  religious  teaching  of  the 
thoughtful  Negro,  find  much  of  interest. 
They  hear  sermons  marked  by  great  elo- 
quence.  In  the  Evangelical  church  the 
preacher  is  not  afraid  to  give  his  imagina- 
tion  play,  and  in  finely  chosen,  vivid  lan- 
guage,  pictures  his  thought  to  his  people. 
Especially  does  he  love  to  teil  the  story  of 
a  future  life,  of  Paradise  with  its  rapturous 
beauty  of  color  and  sound,  its  golden  streets, 
its  gates  of  precious  stones,  effulgent,  radi- 
ant.  He  dwells  not  upon  the  harshness, 
but  rather  upon  the  merey  of  God. 


EARNING  A  LIVING  US 

A  theological  library  connected  with  a 
Calvinistic  church,  when  recently  cata- 
logued,  disclosed  two  long  shelves  of  books 
upon  Hell  and  two  slim  volumes  upon 
Heaven.  No  such  unloving  Puritanism  dom- 
inates  the  Negro's  thought.  Hell's  horrors 
may  be  portrayed  at  a  revival  to  bring  the 
sinner  to  repentance,  but  only  as  an  aid  to 
a  clearer  vision  of  the  glories  of  Heaven. 

The  Negro  churches  lay  greater  stress 
than  formerly  upon  practical  religion;  they 
try  to  turn  a  fine  frenzy  into  a  determination 
for  righteousness.  This  was  strikingly  ex- 
emplified  lately  in  one  of  New  York's  col- 
ored  Baptist  churches.  During  the  solemn 
rite  of  immersion  the  congregation  began  to 
grow  hysterical,  or  "happy,"  as  they  would 
have  phrased  it;  there  were  cries  of  "Yes, 
Jesus,"  "We're  comin',  Lord,"  and  swayings 
of  the  body  back  ward  and  forward.  The 
minister  with  loud  and  stirring  appeal  for 
a  time  encouraged  these  emotions.  Then 
in  a  moment  he  brought  quiet  to  his  congre- 
gation and  called  them  to  the  consecration 
of  labor.  Faith  without  works  was  vain. 
Baptism  was  not  the  end,  but  only  the  begin- 


124  HALF  A  MAN 

ning  of  their  salvation.  "You-all  bleege 
ter  work,"  he  said,  "if  yer  gwine  f oller  der 
Lord.  Ain't  Jesus  work  in  der  carpenter 
shop  tili  he  nigh  on  thirty  year  old?  Den 
one  day  he  stood  up  (he  ain't  none  er  yer 
two-by-fo'  men)  an'  he  tak  off  his  blue  apun 
(I  reckon  he  wore  er  apun  like  we-alls)  an' 
he  goes  on  down  ter  der  wilderness,  an' 
John  der  Baptist  baptize  him." 

From  oratory  one  turns  naturally  to 
music.  The  feeling  for  rhythm,  for  melodi- 
ous  sound,  that  leads  the  Negro  to  use 
majestie  words  of  which  he  has  not  always 
mastered  the  meaning,  leads  him  also  to 
musical  expression.  He  has  an  instinct 
for  harmony,  and,  when  within  hearing  dis- 
tance  of  any  instrument,  will  whistle,  not 
the  melody,  however  assertive,  but  will 
add  a  part.^  Those  who  have  visited  col- 
ored  schools,  and  especially  the  colored 
schools  of  the  far  South  where  the  pupils 
are  unfamiliar  with  other  music  than  their 
own,  can  never  forget  the  exquisite,  haunt- 
ing  singing.     When  a  foreman  wants  to  get 

»See  H.  J.  Wilson.  "The  Negro  and  Music,"  Outlook, 
Dec.  1,  1906. 


EARNING  A  LIVING  125 

energetic  work  from  his  black  laborers  he 
sets  them  to  singing  stirring  tunes.  The 
Negro  has  his  labor  songs  as  the  sailor  has 
his  chanties,  and  it  would  be  impossible  to 
measure  the  joy  Coming  to  both  through 
musical  expression. 

In  New  York,  despite  their  poverty,  few 
Negroes  fail  to  possess  some  musical  instru- 
ment  —  a  banjo  perhaps,  or  a  guitar,  a 
mandolin  or  zither,  or  it  may  be  the  highly 
prized  piano.  Visiting  of  an  evening  in 
the  Phipps  model  tenement,  one  hears  a 
variety  of  gay  tinkling  sounds.  And  besides 
the  mechanical  instruments  there  is  always 
the  great  natural  instrument,  the  human 
voice.  Singing,  though  not  as  common  in 
the  city  as  in  the  country,  is  still  often  heard, 
especially  in  the  summer,  and  remains  musi- 
cal, though  New  York's  noise  and  cheap 
and  vulgär  entertainments  have  an  unhappy 
fashion  of  roughening  her  children's  voices. 

Music  furnishes  a  means  of  livelihood  to 
many  Negroes  and  Supplements  the  income 
of  many  others.  Boys  contribute  to  the 
family  support  by  singing  cheap  songs  in 
saloons  or  even  in  houses  of  Prostitution. 


126  HALF  A  MAN 

A  boy  "nightingale"  will  earn  the  needed 
money  f or  rent  while  learning,  all  too  quickly, 
the  ways  of  viciousness.  Others,  more  care- 
fully  reared,  sing  at  church  or  secret  society 
concert,  perhaps  receiving  a  little  pay. 
Men  form  male  quartettes  that  for  five  or 
ten  dollars  furnish  a  part  of  an  evening's 
entertainment.  There  are  many  Negro 
musicians  and  eloeutionists  who  largely 
Support  themselves  by  their  share  in  the 
receipts  from  concerts  and  social  gather- 
ings. 

We  speak  of  men  crossing  the  line  when 
they  intermarry  with  the  whites,  biit  there 
is  another  crossing  of  the  line  when  some 
Negro  by  his  genius  makes  the  world  for- 
get  his  race.  Such  a  man  is  the  artist, 
Henry  Tanner;  and  New  York  has  such 
Negro  musicians.  Mr.  Harry  Burleigh,  the 
baritone  at  St.  George's,  has  won  high  rec- 
ognition,  not  only  as  an  interpreter,  but  as 
a  composer  of  music;  and  one  of  the  richest 
synagogues  of  the  city  has  a  Negro  for  its 
assistant  organist.  There  are  five  colored 
orchestras  in  New  York,  the  one  conducted 
by    Mr.    Walter    A.    Craig    having    toured 


EARNING  A  LIVING  127 

successfully  in  New  England  and  many  other 
northern  states. 

But  the  colored  musician  has  usually 
found  bis  opportunity  for  expression  and 
for  a  living  wage  upon  the  stage.  Probably 
many  of  the  actors  noted  on  the  census  list 
are  musicians,  and  many  of  the  musicians, 
actors;  the  writer  of  the  topical  song  having 
himself  sung  it  in  vaudeville  or  musical 
comedy.  Few  New  Yorkers  appreciate  how 
many  of  the  tunes  hummed  in  the  street 
or  ground  out  on  the  hand-organ,  have  orig- 
inated  in  Negro  brains.  "The  Right  Church 
but  the  Wrong  Pew,"  "Teasing,"  "Nobody," 
*'Under  the  Bamboo  Tree,"  which  Cole  and 
Johnson,  the  composers,  heard  the  last 
thing  as  they  left  the  dock  in  New  York,  and 
the  first  thing  when  they  arrived  in  Paris, 
these  are  a  few  of  the  populär  favorites. 
Handsome  incomes  have  been  netted  by  the 
shrewder  among  these  composers,  and  the 
dem  and  for  their  songs  is  continuous. 

With  a  bright  song  and  a  jolly  dance 
comes  success.  Picking  up  the  copy  of  the 
New  York  Age,  that  lies  on  my  desk,  I  find 
jottings   of  twenty-four   colored  troupes  in 


128  HALF  A  MAN 

vaudeville  in  the  larger  cities  of  the  North 
and  West.  Three  are  at  Proctor's  and  three 
at  Keith's.  Their  economic  outlook  is  not 
so  hilarious  as  their  songs,  for  transporta- 
tion  is  expensive  and  bookings  are  uncer- 
tain;  yet  pecuniarily  these  actors  are  far 
better  off  than  their  more  sober  brothers 
who  stick  to  their  elevators  or  their  porters' 
Jobs. 

Twenty  years  ago  the  Negro  performer 
probably  had  Httle  anticipation  of  advancing 
beyond  minstrel  work,  in  which  he  sang 
loud,  danced  hard,  and  told  a  funny  story. 
S.  H.  Dudley,  the  leading  comedian  in  the 
"Smart  Set"  colored  Company,  said  in 
1909:  "When  I  started  in  business  I  had 
no  idea  of  getting  as  high  as  I  am  now.  A 
minstrel  Company  came  to  the  Httle  town  in 
Texas  where  I  was  raised,  and  at  once  my 
ambition  fired  me  to  become  a  musician. 
So  I  bought  a  battered  hörn  and  began  to 
toot,  to  the  great  annoyance  of  my  neighbors. 
Then  I  secured  an  engagement  with  a  min- 
strel Company  whose  cornet  player  had 
fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  law;  and  now 
here  I  am  with  one  of  the  best  colored  shows 


EARNING  A  LIVING  129 

ever  gölten  together  and  a  starring  tour 
arranged  for  next  season."  The  movement 
from  the  minstrel  show  to  the  musical  com- 
edy,  from  the  cheapest  form  of  buffoonery  to 
attractive  farce,  and  even  to  good  comedy, 
has  been  accomplished  by  a  number  of 
colored  comedians.  Williams  and  Walker 
may  be  considered  the  pioneers  in  this 
movement,  and  the  story  of  their  success, 
as  Walker  has  told  it,  is  a  fine  example  of 
what  the  Negro  can  do  along  the  line  of 
decided  natural  aptitude.  And  it  is  impor- 
tant  to  notice  this,  for  today,  in  the  educa- 
tion  of  the  race,  sesthetie  instincts  are  often 
suppressed  with  Puritan  vigor,  and  labor  is 
made  ugly  and  unwelcome. 

Bert  W^illiams  and  George  Walker,  one  a 
British  West  Indian,  the  other  a  Westerner, 
met  in  California  where  each  was  hanging 
around  a  box  manager's  ofhce,  looking  for  a 
Job.  Hardly  more  than  boys,  they  secured 
employment  at  seven  dollars  a  week.  That 
was  in  1889.  In  1908  they  made  each 
$250  a  week,  and  in  later  times  they  have 
doubled  and  quadrupled  this.  Their  first 
stage  manager  expected  them  to  perform  as 


130  HALF  A  MAN 

the  blacked-up  white  minstrels  were  perf orm- 
ing,  but  the  two  boys  soon  saw  that  the 
Negro  himself  was  f ar  more  entertaining  than 
the  buffoon  portrayed  by  the  white  man. 
They  wanted  to  show  the  true  Negro,  and 
billing  themselves  as  the  "real  coons"  (their 
white  rivals  called  themselves  "coons")  they 
played  in  San  Francisco  with  some  success. 
Later  they  came  to  New  York,  and  at  Koster 
and  Bial's  made  their  first  hit. 

"Long  before  our  run  terminated,"  Walker 
Said  in  telling  of  those  early  days,  "we  dis- 
covered  an  important  fact:  that  the  hope  of 
the  colored  performer  must  be  in  making  a 
radical  departure  from  the  old  time  'darky' 
style  of  singing  and  dancing.  So  we  set 
ourselves  the  task  of  thinking  along  new 
lines. 

"The  first  move  was  to  hire  a  flat  in 
Fifty-third  Street,  furnish  it,  and  throw  our 
doors  open  to  all  colored  men  who  possessed 
theatrical  and  musical  ability  and  ambi- 
tion.  The  Williams  and  Walker  flat  soon 
became  the  headquarters  of  all  the  artistic 
young  men  of  our  race  who  were  stage- 
struck.     We  entertained  the  late  Paul  Law- 


EARNING  A  LIVING  131 

rence  Dunbar,  who  wrote  lyrics  for  us. 
By  having  these  men  about  us  we  had  the 
opportunity  to  study  the  musical  and  theat- 
rical  ability  of  the  most  talented  members 
of  our  race." 

In  1893  the  World's  Fair  was  held  at 
Chicago,  and  on  the  "Midway"  the  visitor 
saw  races  from  all  over  the  world.  Here 
was  a  Dahomey  village,  with  stränge  little 
huts,  representative  of  the  African  home 
life.  The  Dahomeyans  themselves  were  late 
in  arriving,  and  American  Negroes,  some- 
times  with  an  added  coat  of  black,  were 
employed  to  represent  them.  Among  them 
were  Williams  and  Walker,  who  played 
their  parts  until  the  real  Dahomeyans  arriv- 
ing, they  became  in  turn  spectators  and 
studied  the  true  African.  This  contact 
with  the  dancing  and  singing  of  the  primi- 
tive people  of  their  own  race  had  an  impor- 
tant  effect  upon  their  art.  Their  lyrics 
recalled  African  songs,  their  dancing  took 
on  African  movements,  especially  Walker's. 
Any  one  who  saw  Walker  in  "Abyssinia," 
the  most  African  and  the  most  artistic  of 
their    plays,    must     have     recognized     the 


132  HALF  A  MAN 

savage  beauty  of  his  dancing  when  he  was 
masquerading  as  an  African  king. 

After  the  Dahomey  episode  the  success 
of  the  two  men  was  continuous.  "In  1902 
and  1903,"  Walker  said,  "we  had  all  New 
York  and  London  doing  the  cake  walk."  In 
February,  1908,  they  appeared  in  "Ban- 
danna Land,"  at  the  Majestic  Theatre,  and 
remained  there  for  six  months.  Only  those 
colored  men  who  have  made  a  steady,  uphill 
struggle  for  the  chance  to  play  good  comedy, 
know  how  important  such  recognition  was 
for  the  Negro.  "Bandanna  Land"  was 
probably  the  most  populär  light  opera  in 
New  York  that  winter  next  to  "  The  Merry 
Widow."  The  singing,  es^ecially  that  of 
the  male  chorus,  was  often  beautiful.  Mrs. 
Walker's  dancing  and  charming  acting  were 
delightful,  the  chorus  girls  were  above  the 
average  in  beauty  and  musical  expression, 
and  the  two  men  who  made  the  piece  were 
spontaneously,  irresistibly  funny;  added 
to  this,  unlike  its  successful  rival,  "Ban- 
danna Land"  was  without  a  vulgär  scene 
or  Word. 

This  was  the  last  time  the  two  men  played 


EARNING  A  LIVING  133 

together.  Walker  became  seriously  ill,  and 
died  in  January,  1911.  After  their  Company 
disbanded,  Williams  went  back  to  the  one- 
piece  act  of  vaudeville,  but  as  a  star  in  a 
white  troupe.  His  position  as  a  permanent 
actor  in  the  "Follies  of  1910"  marks  a  new 
departure  for  the  colored  comedian,  a  de- 
parture  won  by  great  talent  combined  with 
character  and  tact. 

Since  1908  the  Majestic  has  seen  another 
colored  Company,  Cole  and  Johnson's,  pre- 
senting  a  half-Negro,  half-Indian,  musical 
comedy,  the  "Red  Moon."  These  two  men, 
for  years  in  vaudeville,  have  written  songs 
for  Lillian  Russell,  Marie  Cahill,  Anna  Held, 
and  other  populär  musical  comedy  and 
vaudeville  singers.  They  have  played  for  six 
months  continuously  at  the  Palace  Theatre, 
London.  Accustomed  to  writing  for  white 
actors,  their  own  plays  are  not  so  distinct- 
ively  African  as  Williams  and  Walker 's. 
Both  Johnson  and  Cole  are  of  the  mulatto 
type,  and  neither  blackens  his  face.  Cole 
is  one  of  the  most  amusing  men  in  comedy 
in  New  York.  He  is  tall  and  very  thin, 
with   a  genius    for    finding    lank    and    gro- 


134  HALF  A  MAN 

tesque  costumes  that  are  delightfully  incon- 
gruous  with  his  grave  face.  The  words  of 
the  musical  comedies  are  his,  the  music, 
Johnson's.  He,  too,  has  become  seriously 
ill,  and  his  Company  has  disbanded.  In 
three  years  the  colored  stage  has  suffered 
serious  loss,  but  we  see  forming  new  and 
successful  companies  whose  reputation  will 
soon  be  assured. 

Comedy  has  always  furnished  a  medium 
for  criticism  of  the  foibles  of  the  times,  and 
there  are  many  sly  digs  at  the  white  man 
in  the  colored  play.  Ernest  Hogan,  now 
deceased,  better  than  any  one  eise  played 
the  rural  southern  darky.  In  the  "Oyster- 
man"  we  saw  him  in  contact  with  a  white 
scamp  who  was  intent  upon  getting  his  re- 
cently  acquired  money.  He  was  urged  to 
take  stock  in  a  land  Company,  to  buy  where 
watermelons  grew  as  thick  as  potatoes, 
and  chickens  were  as  common  as  sparrows. 
The  audience  hated  the  white  man  heartily 
and  sided  with  the  simple,  kindly,  black 
youth,  sitting  with  his  dog  at  his  side,  on 
his  cabin  steps.  Behind  boisterous  laughter 
and  raillery  the  writers  of  these  comedies 


EARNING  A  LIVING  135 

often  gain   the   sympathy  of  their  hearers 
for  the  black  race. 

In  this  attempt  to  show  the  occupational  | 
life  of  the  Negro,  we  have  found  that  race 
prejudice  often  proves  a  bar  to  complete 
success,  to  füll  manhood.  Something  of  this  | 
is  true  with  the  actor  as  well  as  with  the  [ 
laborer  and  the  business  man.  In  securing 
entrance  in  vaudeville,  color  is  at  first  an 
advantage.  The  "darky"  to  the  white  man 
is  grotesquely  amusing,  and  by  rolling  his 
eyes,  showing  a  glistening  smile,  and  wear- 
ing  shoes  that  make  a  monstrosity  of  his 
feet,  the  Negro  may  create  a  laugh  where 
the  man  with  a  white  skin  would  be  hooted 
off  the  stage.  And  since  the  laugh  is  so 
easily  won,  many  eolored  actors  become 
indolent  and  content  themselves,  year  after 
year,  with  playing  the  part  of  buffoon. 
But  with  the  ambition  to  rise  in  his  profes- 
sion  comes  the  difficult  struggle  to  induce 
the  audience  to  see  a  new  Negro  in  the  black 
man  of  today.  The  public  gives  the  eol- 
ored man  no  opportunity  as  a  tragedian, 
demanding  that  his  comedy  shall  border 
always  on  the  farcical.     And  what  is  de- 


136  HALF  A  MAN 

manded  of  the  actor  is  also  demanded  of  the 
musician.  Writers  of  the  scores  of  some 
of  our  musical  comedies  are  musicians  of 
superior  training  and  ability,  but  rarely 
are  they  permitted  füll  expression.  Mr. 
Will  Marion  Cook,  the  composer  of  much  of 
the  music  of  "Bandanna  Land,"  for  a  few 
moments  gives  a  piece  of  exquisite  orches- 
tration.  When  the  colored  minister  rises 
and  exhorts  his  quarrelling  friends  to  be  at 
peace  with  one  another,  one  hears  a  beauti- 
ful  harmony.  I  am  told  that  Mr.  Cook 
declares  that  the  next  score  he  writes  shall 
begin  with  ten  minutes  of  serious  music. 
If  the  audience  doesn't  like  it,  they  can  come 
in  late,  but  for  ten  minutes  he  will  do  some- 
thing  worthy  of  his  genius. 

However  light-hearted  a  people,  and  how- 
ever  worthy  of  praise  the  entertainment 
that  brings  a  jolly,  wholesome  laugh,  let 
US  hope  that  in  the  near  future  the  Negro 
will  find  a  more  complete  expression  for 
his  musical  and  histrionic  gifts.  Some  actor 
of  commanding  talent,  whose  claims  cannot 
be  ignored,  may  reveal  the  larger  life  of 
the  race.     The  nineteenth  Century  knew  a 


EARNING  A  LIVING  137 

great  Negro  actor,  Ira  Aldridge,  a  protege 
and  disciple  of  Edmund  Kean.  He  played 
Othello  to  Kean's  lago,  and  in  the  forties 
toured  Europe  with  his  own  Company, 
receiving  high  honors  in  Berlin  and  St. 
Petersburg.^  A  dark-skinned  African,  of 
immense  power,  physically  and  emotionally, 
he  made  Desdemona  ery  out  in  real  fear, 
and  caused  Bassanio  instinctively  to  shrink 
as  he  demanded  his  pound  of  flesh.  Today's 
actor  must  be  more  subtle  in  his  attack, 
but  it  may  be  given  to  him  to  reveal  the 
thoughts  at  the  back  of  the  black  man's 
mind.  The  genius  of  Zangwill  gave  us  the 
picture  of  the  children  of  the  Ghetto;  per- 
haps  from  the  theatre's  seat  the  American 
will  first  understand  the  despised  black  race. 

1  William  J.  Simmons's,  "Men  of  Mark." 


>f 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  Colored  Woman  as  a  Bread  Winner 

The  lif e  of  the  Negro  woman  of  New  York, 
if  she  belong  to  the  laboring  class,  differs  in 
some  important  respects  from  the  hfe  of  the 
white  laboring  woman.  GeneraHzations  on 
so  comprehensive  a  subject  must,  of  course, 
meet  with  many  exceptions,  but  the  observ- 
ing  visitor,  familiär  with  white  and  colored 
neighborhoods,  quickly  notes  marked  con- 
trasts  between  the  two,  contrasts  largely  the 
result  of  different  occupational  opportunities. 
These  pertain  both  to  the  married  woman 
and  the  unmarried  working  girl. 

The  generality  of  white  women  in  New 
York,  wives  of  laboring  men,  infrequently 
engage  in  gainful  occupations.  In  the  early 
years  of  married  life  the  wife  relies  on  her 
husband's  wage  for  support,  and  within  her 

tiny  tenement-flat  bears  and  rears  her  chil- 

138 


THE   COLORED   WOMAN       139 

dren  and  performs  her  household  duties  — 
the  sewing,  cooking,  washing,  and  ironing, 
and  the  daily  righting  of  the  contracted 
rooms.  She  is  a  conscientious  wife  and 
mother,  and  rarely,  either  by  night  or  by  day, 
journeys  far  from  her  own  home.  When  un- 
employment  Visits  the  family  wage  earner, 
she  turns  to  laundry  work  and  day's  cleaning 
for  money  to  meet  the  rent  and  to  supply  the 
household  with  scanty  meals;  but  as  soon  as 
her  husband  resumes  work  she  returns  to 
her  narrow  round  of  domestie  duties. 

After  a  score  of  these  monotonous  years 
more  prosperous  times  come  to  the  house- 
wife.  Every  morning  two  or  three  children 
go  out  to  work,  and  their  wages  make  heavier 
the  family  purse.  Son  and  daughter,  having 
entered  factory  or  störe,  bring  home  their 
pay  envelopes  unbroken  on  Saturday  nights, 
and  the  augmentation  of  the  father's  wage 
gives  the  mother  an  income  to  administer. 
After  the  young  people's  wants  in  clothing 
and  entertainment  have  been  in  part  sup- 
plied,  it  becomes  possible  to  buy  new  furni- 
ture  on  the  instalment  plan,  to  hire  a  piano, 
even  to  move  into  a  better  neighborhood. 


140  HALF  A  MAN 

The  earnings  of  a  number  of  children,  sup- 
plementing  the  wage  of  the  head  of  the 
family,  make  life  more  tolerable  for  all. 

These  days,  however,  do  not  last  long. 
Sons  and  daughters  marry  and  assume  new 
responsibilities;  the  husbandjhis„beÄLstrength 
gone,  finds  unemproyment  Jjicreasing:  and 
since  saving,  except  for  wasteful  industrial 
Insurance,  has  seemed  impossible  withoiit 
sacrificing  the  deeencies  and  pleasures  of 
the  children,  the  end  of  the  womaßisjnarried 
life  is  likely  to  be  hard  andxomförtl^s. 

This  rough  description  may  fairly  be  taken 
to  represent  the  life  of  the  average  New 
York  white  woman  of  the  laboring  class.  It 
is  not,  however,  the  life  of  the  average  col- 
ored  woman.  With  her,  self-sustaining  work 
usually  begins  at  fifteen,  and  by  no  ineans 
ceases  with  her  entrance  upon  marriage, 
which  only  entails  new  financial  burdens. 
The  wage  of  the  husband,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  usually  insuJQBcient  to  support  a  family, 
save  in  extreme  penury,  and  the  wife  accepts 
the  necessity  of  supplementing  the  husband's 
income.  This  she  accomplishes  by  taking 
in  washing  or  by  entering  a  private  family 


THE   COLORED   WOMAN       141 

to  do  housework.  Sometimes  she  is  away 
from  her  tenement  nearly  every  day  in  the 
week;  again  the  bulk  of  her  earnings  comes 
from  home  industry.  Her  day  holds  more 
diversity  than  that  of  her  white  neighbor; 
she  meets  more  people,  becomes  familiär 
with  the  ways  of  the  well-to-do,  —  their 
household  decorations,  their  dress,  their  re- 
finements  of  manner;  but  she  has  but  few 
hours  to  give  to  her  children.  With  her 
husband  she  is  ready  to  be  friend  and  help- 
mate;  but  should  he  turn  out  a  bad  bar- 
gain,  she  has  no  fear  of  leaving  him,  since 
her  marital  relations  are  not  welded  by 
economic  dependence.  An  industrious,  com- 
petent  woman,  she  works  and  spends,  and  in 
her  scant  hours  of  leisure  takes  pride  in  keep- 
ing  her  children  well-dressed  and  clean. 

At  the  second  period  of  her  married  life, 
when  her  boys  and  girls,  few  in  number  if 
she  be  a  New  Yorker,  begin  to  engage  in 
self-supporting  work,  her  condition  shows 
less  improvement  than  that  of  the  white 
woman  of  her  class.  Sometimes  her  chil- 
dren hand  her  their  whole  wage,  far  oftener 
they  bring  her  only  such  part  as  they  choose 


142  HALF  A  IVIAN 

to  spare.  The  strict  accounting  of  the  minor 
to  the  parent,  usual  among  Northerners  in 
the  past,  and  today  common  among  the 
immigrant  class,  is  not  a  part  of  the  Negro's 
training.  Rather,  as  the  race  has  attained 
freedom  it  has  copied  the  indulgent  attitude 
of  the  once  famihar  "master,"  and  regrets 
that  its  offspring  must  enter  upon  any  work. 
Children  with  this  tradition  about  them  use 
the  money  they  earn  largely  for  the  gratifica- 
tion  of  their  vanity,  not  for  the  lessening  of 
their  mother's  tasks.  But  a  more  potent 
factor  than  lack  of  discipHne  keeps  the 
mother  from  being  the  administrator  of  the 
family's  Joint  earnings.  White  boys  and 
girls  in  New  York  enter  work  that  makes  it 
possible  and  advantageous  for  them  to  dwell 
at  home;  Negroes  must  go  out  to  service, 
accept  long  and  irregulär  hours  in  hotel  or 
apartment,  travel  for  days  on  boat  or  train. 
The  family  home  is  infrequently  available 
to  them,  and  money  given  in  to  it  brings 
small  return.  Under  these  circumstances  it 
is  not  Strange  if  the  mother  must  continue 
her  round  of  washing  and  scrubbing. 

The  last  years  of  life  of  the  Negro  woman. 


THE  COLORED  WOMAN       143 

probably  a  little  more  than  the  last  years  of 
the  white,  are  likely  to  bring  happiness. 
With  a  mother  at  work  a  grandmother 
becomes  an  important  factor,  and  elderly 
colored  women  are  often  seen  bringing  up 
little  children  or  helping  in  the  laundry  — 
that  great  colored  home  industry.  Accus- 
tomed  all  their  lives  to  hard  labor,  it  is  easy 
for  them  to  find  work  that  shall  repay  their 
Support,  and  in  their  children's  households 
they  are  treated  with  respect  and  consider- 
ation. 

The  contrast  in  the  lives  of  the  colored  and 
white  married  women  is  not  more  strongly 
marked  than  the  contrast  in  the  lives  of  their 
unmarried  daughters  and  sisters.  UnabletCL. 
enter  anv-— pur^ulL-  except  housework,  the 
unskilled  colored  .^irLgoes  out  to  Service  or 
helps  at  home  with  the  laundry  j)r^ewing. 
Factory  and  störe  are  closed  to  her,  and 
rarely  can  she  take  a  place  among  other 
working  girls.  Her  hours  are  the  long,  irreg- 
ulär hours  of  domestic  service.  She  bririgs 
no  pay  envel6pe"~hFme  "to  her  möt^her,  the 
two  theiT^cafefülIy  discussmg  tow  joiuch 
belongs  rightfully  fpr  board.  and  how  much 


144  HALF  A  MAN 

may  go  for  the  new  coat  or  dress,  but  takes 
the  eighteen  or  twenty  dollars  given  her  at 
the  end  of  the  month,  and  quite  by  herseif 
determines  all  her  expenditures.  Far  oftener 
than  any  elass  of  white  girls  in  the  city  she 
lives  away  from  the  parental  home. 

These  are  some  of  the  differences  found  by 
the  observer  who  looks  into  the  Negro  and 
the  white  tenement.  They  need  not,  how- 
ever,  rest  alone  upon  any  observer's  testi- 
mony.  We  have  in  the  census  abundant 
statistics  for  their  verification.  Scattered 
among  the  volumes  on  Population,  Oeeupa- 
tions,  and  Women  at  Work  are  many  facts 
concerning  Negro  women  workers  of  New 
York,  all  of  them  confirmatory  of  the  descrip- 
tion  just  given.  We  may  note  the  most 
important. 

In  1900,  whereas  4.2  per  cent  of  the  white 
married  women  in  New  York  were  engaged 
in  gainful  oecupations,  31.4  per  cent  of  the 
Negro  married  women  were  earning  their 
living,  over  seven  times  as  many  in  Propor- 
tion as  the  whites.^ 

*  These  figures  are  obtained  by  a  combination  of  tables, 
one  in  Population,  Vol.  II,  Part  II,  p.  332,  describing  the  whole 


THE   COLORED  WOMAN       145 

Again,  in  the  total  population  of  New 
York's  women  workers,  80  per  cent  were 
Single,  10  per  cent  married,  and  10  per  cent 
widowed  and  divorced;  while  among  the 
Negroes,  the  single  women  were  only  53 
per  cent,  the  married  25  per  cent,  and  the 
widowed  22.^ 

Statistics  of  the  age  period  at  which  women 
are  at  work,  show  the  Negro's  long  continuing 
wage-earning  activity.  Between  sixteen  and 
twenty  is  a  busy  time  for  the  women  of  both 
races.  Among  the  whites  59  per  cent  are 
in  gainfui  occupations,  among  the  Negroes 
66  per  cent.  But  as  the  girl  arrives  at  the 
period  when  she  is  likely  to  marry,  the 
per  cent  of  workers  among  the  whites 
drops  rapidly,  until  for  white  women, 
forty-five  and  over,  it  is  13.5,  about  one 
in  seven.  With  the  colored,  among  the 
women  forty-five  years  of  age  and  over,  53 

of  Greater  New  York,  the  other  in  Women  at  Work,  pp.  266 
to  275,  describing  Manhattan,  the  Bronx,  and  Brooklyn. 
The  error  through  the  Omission  of  Richmond  and  Queens  is 
probably  negligible. 

1  Federal  Census  1900:  Women  at  Work,  Table  28,  pp.  266 
to  274.  Among  800  married  and  widowed  colored  women 
whom  I  myself  visited,  I  found  only  150,  19  per  cent,  who 
were  not  engaged  in  gainfui  occupations. 


146  HALF  A  MAN 

per  Cent,  more  than  half,  still  engage  in 
gainfiil  toil.^ 

Family  life  can  be  studied  in  the  census 
table.  While  59  per  cent  of  the  unmarried 
white  girls  at  work  live  at  home,  this  is 
found  to  be  true  of  but  25  per  cent  of  the 
colored  girls;  that  is,  75  per  cent,  three-quar- 
ters  of  all  the  colored  unmarried  working 
women,  live  with  their  employers  or  board.^ 

The  census  volume  on  occupations  reveals 
at  once  the  narrow  ränge  of_the  New  York 
colored  woman's  workingjife.  Personal  and 
domesHc"  Service  absorbs  90  per  cent  of  her 
numbers  against  40  per  cent  among  the 
white.  But  before  considering  more  fully 
the  colored  girl  at  work,  we  need  to  notice 
another  Statistical  fact,  the  preponderance 
in  the  city  of  Negro  women  over  Negro 
men. 

Like  the  foreigner,  the  youth-X)!  the  Ne^ro 
race  comes  first  to  the^^itj^to  seek^  liveli- 
hoödr  The  colored  population  shows  41  per 
cent  of  its  nuniber  between  the  ages  of  20 

^Federal  Census  1900:    Women  at  Work,  Table  10,  pp. 

147  to  151. 

^  Federal  Census  1900:  Women  at  Work,  Table  28,  pp. 
266  to  275. 


THE  COLORED  WOMAN       147 

and  35.  But  unlike  the  foreigner,  the  Negro 
women  find  larger  opportunity  and  come  in 
greater  numbers  than  the  men.  Their  ränge 
of  work  is  iiärrow,  Hbut  wltETn  it  they  ean 
command  double  the  wages  they  receive  at 
home,  and  if  they  are  possessed  of  average 
abihty,  they  are  seldom  long  out  of  work. 
With  the  immense  growth  of  wealth  in  New 
York  the  demand  for  servants  continually 
increases,  and  finding  little  response  from  the 
white  native  born  population,  many  mis- 
tresses  receive  readily  the  Services  of  the 
English-speaking  southern  and  West  Indian 
blacks.  So  the  boats  from  Charleston  and 
Norfolk  and  the  British  West  Indies  bring 
scores  and  hundreds  of  Negro  women  from 
country  districts,  from  cities  where  they  have 
spent  a  short  time  at  service,  girls  with  and 
girls  without  experience,  all  seeking  better 
wages  in  a  new  land. 

Mr.  Kelly  JViiller^  was  the  first  to  call 
atteMion_^to..the  ^resence  in  American  cities 
of  jsurplus  Negro  women.M  The  phenomenon 
is  not  peculiar  to  New  York.     Baltimore, 

^  This  is  incorporated  in  a  chapter  in  Mr.  Miller's  volume 
on  "Race  Adjustment. " 


148  HALF  A  MAN 

Washington,  New  Orleans,  all  show  the  same 
condition.  In  Atlanta  the  women  number 
143  to  every  hundred  colored  men.  New 
York  shows  123  to  every  masculine  one  hun- 
dred. These  surplus  women  account  in  part 
for  the  number  of  Negro  women  workers  in 
New  York  not  living  at  home.  Some  are 
with  their  employers,  but  others  lodge  in  the 
already  crowded  tenements,  for  the  southern 
servant,  unaccustomed  to  spending  the  night 
at  her  employer's,  in  New  York  also,  fre- 
quently  arranges  to  leave  her  mistress  when 
her  work  is  done.  In  their  hours  of  leisure 
the  surplus  women  are  known  to  play  havoc 
with  their  neighbors'  sons,  even  with  their 
neighbors'  husbands,  for  since  lack  of  men 
makes  marriage  impossible  for  about  a  fifth 
of  New  York's  colored  girls,  social  disorder 
results.  Surplus  Negro  women,  able  to  se- 
cure  work,  support  idle,  able-bodied  Negro 
men.  The  lounger  at  the  street  corner,  the 
dandy  in  the  parlor  thrumming  on  his  banjo, 
means  a  Malindy  of  the  hour  at  the  kitchen 
washboard.  In  a  town  in  Germany,  where 
men  were  sadly  scarce,  I  was  told  that  a 
servant  girl  paid  as  high  as  a  mark  to  a 


THE  COLORED  WOMAN       149 

soldier  to  walk  with  her  in  the  Hofgarten 
on  a  Sunday  afternoon.  Colored  men  in 
New  York  command  their  "mark,"  and  girls 
are  found  who  keep  them  in  polished  boots, 
fashionable  coats,  and  well-creased  trousers. 
Could  the  Negro  country  boy  be  as  certain 
as  his  sister  of  lucrative  employment  in  New 
York,  or  could  he  oftener  persuade  her  to 
remain  with  him  on  the  farm,  he  would 
better  city  civilization.  But  the  demand  for 
servants  increases,  and  the  colored  girl  con- 
tinues  to  be  attracted  to  the  city  where  she 
can  earn  and  spend. 

The  table  on  the  following  page  shows  in 
Condensed  form  the  occupations  of  the  Negro 
women  in  New  York.  As  we  see,  the  Negro 
women  number  forty -four  in  every  thousand 
women  workers. 

Ninety  per  cent  of  all  the  Negrp_  women^ 
workgrs^f  New  York  are,  in-  dom^stic-and^       ^ 
personal  Service.     This  includes  a  variety  of 
positions.     Some  Negro  girls  work  in  stores,   _ 
dusting   stock,    taking   charge   of   cloak   or 
toiiet  rooms,  scrubbing  floors.     Their  hours 
are  regulär,  but  the  pay,  five  or  six,  or  very 
occasionally  eight  dollars  a  weekt  means  a 


I 


150  HALF  A  MAN 

scanty  livelihood  without  hope  of  advance- 
ment.  The  ]pösition  of  maid  in  a  theatre 
where  perqiiisites  are  larger  is  prized,  and  a 
new  and  pleasant  place  is  that  of  a  maid  on 

Females  Ten  Years  of  Age  and  over,  Engaged  in 
Gainful  Occupations  in  New  York 


Professional  service 

Domestic     and     personal 

Service  

Laundresses   

Scrvants  and  waitresses 
AU  others   

Trade  and  transportation 

Manufacturing    and    me- 
chanical  pursuits  .  . . 

Dressmakers 

Seamstresses 

All  others   


Total  incliiding  some  oc- 
cupations not  specified  .  . 


Total 

Negro 

22,422 

281 

146,722 

14,586 

16,102 

3,224 

103,963 

10,297 

24,657 

1,065 

65,318 

106 

132,535 

1,138 

37,514 

813 

18,108 

249 

76,913 

76 

367,437 

16,114 

Nuinbcr  to  every 
1000  workers 


12 

100 

200 

99 

43 

Between  one 

and  two 

7 
22 
14 

1 

44 


Federal  Census  1900:  Occupations,  Table  43,  p.  638 

a  limited  train.  But  tlie  biilk  of  the  girls 
are  servants  in  boarding-hoiises,  or  are  with 
private  families  as  niirses,  waitresses,  cooks, 
laundresses,  maids-of-all-work,  earning  from 


THE  COLORED  WOMAN       151 

sixteen  and  eighteen  to  twenty-five  and  even 
thirty  dollars  a  month.  Occasionally  a  very 
skilful  Cook  can  command  as  high  a  monthly 
wage  as  fifty  dollars. 

The  colored  girl  is  frequently  found  en- 
gaged  at  general  housework  in  a  small  apart- 
ment.  Her  desire  to  return  to  her  lodging 
at  night  makes  her  populär  with  families 
living  in  contracted  space.  With  the  con- 
veniences  of  a  New  York  flat,  dumb-waiter, 
clothes-dryer,  gas,  and  electricity,  general 
housework  is  not  severe.  Work  begins  early, 
seven  at  the  latest,  and  lasts  until  the  dinner 
is  cleared  away,  at  half-past  eight  or  nine. 
Released  then  from  further  tasks,  the  young 
girl  goes  to  her  tiny  inner  tenement  room, 
dons  a  fresh  dress,  and  then,  as  chance  or  her 
training  determines,  walks  the  streets,  goes 
to  the  theatre,  or  attends  the  class  meeting 
at  her  church.  Entertainments  among  the 
Negroes  are  rarely  under  way  until  ten 
o'clock,  and  short  hours  of  sleep  in  ill- 
ventilated  rooms  soon  weaken  the  vitality  of 
the  new-comer.  Housework._under  these 
conditions  does  not  jcreate^  much  ambition ; 
the  ^litress  moves,  flitting,  in   New  York 


152  HALF  A  MAN 

fashion,  from  one  flat  to  another,  and  the 
girl  also  flits  among  employers,  changing 
with  the  whim  of  the  moment. 

Few  subjects  present  so  fascinating  a  field 
for  discussion  as  domestic  service,  and  the 
housewife  of  today  enters  into  it  with  energy, 
sometimes  decrying  the  modern  working  girl, 
again  planning  household  economics  that 
shall  Iure  her  from  factory  or  shop.  The 
only  point  we  need  to  consider  now  is  the 
dissatisfaction  that  results  when  64  per  cent 
of  the  women  of  a  race  are  forced  by  circum- 
stances  into  one  occupation.  Those  with  na- 
tive  abihty  along  this  line  succeed  and  make 
others  and  themselves  happy.  The  faithful, 
patient,  loyal  Negro  servant  is  well-known, 
the  black  mammy  has  passed  into  American 
literature,  but  not  every  colored  woman  can 
wisely  be  given  this  position.  Some  of  the 
Negro  girls  who  take  up  housework  in  New 
York  are  capable  of  more  intelligent  labor, 
and  chafe  under  their  Hmitations;  others 
have  not  the  ability  to  do  good  housework; 
for  domestic  service  requires  more  mental 
capacity  than  is  demanded  in  many  facto- 
ries.    In  short,  a  great  many  colored  girls  in 


THE  COLORED  WOMAN       153 

New  York  are_j:Qiind- ppg«  ^p  «gnarp  linipcsj 
and  the  communiijjsthe  loser  by  it. 

Among  these  round  pegs  are  girls  who, 
determining  no  longer  to  drudge  in  lonely 
kitchens,  contrive,  as  we  shall  see  later,  to 
find  positions  at  other  more  attractive  repu- 
table  work.  Others,  deciding  in  favor  of 
material  betterment  at  whatever  cost,  lower 
their  moral  Standard  and  secure  easier  and 
more  remunerative  Jobs.  A  well-paying 
place,  with  short  hours  and  high  tips,  at  once 
offers  itself  to  the  colored  girl  who  is  willing 
to  work  for  a  woman  of  the  demi-monde. 
In  the  sporting  house  also  she  is  preferred 
as  a  servant,  her  dark  complexion  separating 
her  from  other  inmates.  In  1858,  Sanger 
wrote  in  his  "History  of  Prostitution,"  "The 
servants  (in  these  houses)  are  almost  always 
colored  wonien.  Their  wages  are  liberal, 
their  perquisites  considerable,  and  their 
work  light."  Untrained  herseif,  bereft  of 
home  influence,  with  an  ancestry  that  some- 
times  cries  out  her  parent's  weakness  in  the 
contour  and  color  of  her  face,  the  Negro  girl 
in  New  York,  more  even  than  the  foreign 
immigrant,  is  subject  to  degrading  tempta- 


154  HALF  A  MAN 

tion.  The  good  pooplo,  who  ai\^  ofton  so 
exaoting,  waiit  her  for  her  willingnoss  to 
work  long  hours  at  a  lowor  wage  than  tho 
white;  and  the  bad  pt\)ple,  who  are  often  so 
earelessly  kind,  otTer  her  Hght  hibor  and 
generous  pay.  It  is  small  wonder  that  she 
sonietimes  choosos  the  Kutter. 

Not  all  the  ct>lored  girls  who  work  in 
questionable  phurs  and  with  questionable 
pivple  take  tiie  Jobs  irxmx  ehoicv:  soiuc  am 
sent  without  knowing  the  charaeter  of  tlie 
house  they  enter.  A  few  years  ago  an  agila- 
tion  was  starteil  for  the  prottvtion  of  helpless 
Negro  inmiigrants  who  had  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  nnsernpnlous  en\ploynient  ageneies. 
A  System  existeii»  and  still  exists,  by  whicli 
einploynient  ageneies  were  able  to  acTvänee 
the  IravelTing  expenses  of  soidhern  girls,  wlieT 
V*  on  their  arrival  in  New  York  were  held  in 
debl  \mt il  thii  jOiiOilflie  Journey  ItÄd-iieen 
many  times  repaid.  Helpless  jii  the  jpower 
of  tlie  agent,  the  new-cvnier  was^  forced  to 
work  wliero  he  wished.  linder  the  eity's 
departnieut  of  liivnses  sonie  of  tlie  niore 
nnsenipulous  of  these  ageneies  have  btXMi 
eloseik  and  philanthropy  has  plaeed  a  visitor 


TIIK   (OKOKKl)    \V()MAN        155 

yi— lJlC_iil2iJi^ti)  ^ivo  ixid  iiml  advioo  t^iHi- 
protcH'tod  giij^  Hut  llio  tlaiiK^T  is  hy  iio 
inoaiis  ovor.  Thosc  fjuuiliar  with  l.ho  siib- 
jcci  nsscvl  tlial  (linv  is  i\  j>ro[)orlionaiely 
laixor  hl.'U'k  slavo  llian  wliilo  slavc  traÜio. 

Thoiv  is  a  i^aiiiful  oc('upalii>n  for  wdiiumu 
blai'k  aiul  \vhiU\  too  iinpDrlauL  to  bo  loft 
unnoticvd.  Tho  (vnsus  doos  not.  tabulato  it. 
Tho  b(\st  i>(H>plo  striw  to  iguore  it,  and  carc- 
fully  sholtorod  ^irls  jifrow  n[>  nnconsc  ious  of 
its  oxislontv.  Hut  tlio  cniploynuMil  ai^cnl, 
inulorstaiuls  its  (H>innuMvial  valiu\  and  liltlo 
ohiKlnMi  in  [\\c  vc(\  liü^lü  noi^idmrhooil  iwc  as 
fannliar  with  il  as  with  tlio  vending  of  poa- 
nuts  on  tho  stnvt.  To  tlio  poor  it  is  always 
an  opon  door  alTordin^  al  loasl  a  toniporary 
respitc  froni  dispOvSsossion  and  slarvation. 
lb>w  niany  of  tho  coloivd  turn  to  il,  wo  tlo 
not  know  —  cortainly  not  a  fow.  Sonio  i:^i\u\ 
frotn  it  a  niiNiKro  livolihood,  bnt  otluM*s,  for 
a  tinio  at  loast,  achieve  conifort  and  ovon 
luxury. 

Anion^u:  Iho  round  p(%s  tliat  tbo  scpuiro 
liolos  so  unconiforlably  cliafo  aiv  colonnl  girls 
of  inli^lliiivnco  and  oliarni  who  dolibtM'al(*ly 
joüi  tJie  anli-sociar  ciass.     Trobablv  a   fcnv 


156  HALF  A  MAN 

in  any  case  would  lead  this  life,  but  the  his- 
tory  of  many  shows  an  unsuccessful  struggle 
for  congenial  work,  ending  with  a  choice  of 
material  comfort  however  high  the  moral 
cost.  In  One  Hundred  and  Thirty-fourth 
and  One  Hundred  and  Thirty-fifth  Streets 
are  apartments  where  such  girls  hve,  two  or 
three  together,  surrounded  by  comforts  that 
their  respectable  neighbors  who  go  out  to 
Cook,  wash,  and  iron  may  fruitlessly  long 
for  all  their  lives.  A  colored  Philanthropie 
worker,  stopping  by  chance  at  the  door  of 
one  of  these  places,  saw  an  old  College  friend. 
"How  can  you  do  it!  "  she  cried  as  she  recog- 
nized  the  life  the  girl  was  leading,  "How  can 
you  do  it!  I  would  rather  kill  myself  scrub- 
bing!"  "There  is  the  difference  between 
US,"  came  the  answer,  "I  am  not  willing  to 
die,  and  I  cannot  and  will  not  scrub." 
^  It  is  pleasant  and  encouraging  to  turn  from 
colored  women  who  have  given  up  the 
struggle,  to  ambitious,  successful  workers. 
Some  among  these  are  in  the  domestic  Ser- 
vice group  and  enjoy  with  heartiness  their 
tasks  as  nurse-maid  or  cook.  "This  is  my 
piano  day,"  an  expert  colored  washerwoman 


THE   COLORED  WOMAN       157 

says  of  a  Monday  morning.  Among  the 
domestic  service  workers,  as  classified  by  the 
census,  is  the  trained  nurse,  filling  an  increas- 
ingly  important  position  in  New  York.  In 
1909,  Lincoln  Hospital  graduated  twenty-one 
colored  nurses,  some  of  whom  remain  in 
New  York  to  do  excellent  work. 

In  the  professions,  with  the  women  as 
with  the  men,  the  first  place  numerically  is 
occupied  by  performers  upon  the  stage.  So 
much  has  been  said  of  the  Negro  as  an  actor 
that  there  is  little  to  add.  A  rather  better 
class  of  colored  than  of  white  women  join 
musical  comedy  chorus  troupes,  for  fifteen  or 
eighteen  dollars  a  week  that  will  attract  a 
Negro  to  the  stage  can  be  made  by  a  white 
girl  in  a  dozen  other  ways.  Lightness  of 
color  seems  a  requisite  for  a  stage  position, 
unless  a  dark  skin  is  offset  by  very  great 
ability,  as  in  the  case  of  Aida  Walker,  one  of 
the  most  graceful  and  charming  women  in 
musical  comedy. 

No  record  is  kept  of  the  number  of  colored 
teachers  in  the  city's  public  schools,  but  each 
year  Negro  graduates  from  the  normal  Col- 
lege secure  positions.     These  are  found  from 


158  HALF  A  MAN 

the  kindergarten  through  the  primary  and 
up  to  the  highest  grammar  grade.  The 
colored  girl  with  intellectual  abihty,  par- 
ticularly  if  she  comes  of  an  old  New  York 
family,  is  apt  to  turn  to  teaching.  Her 
novitiate  is  long,  but  a  permanent  certifi- 
cate secured,  she  is  sure  of  a  good  salary, 
increasing  with  her  years  of  Service,  and 
ending  in  a  pension.  This  path  of  security 
has  perhaps  tended  to  keep  New  York  col- 
ored girls  from  going  into  other  lines  of 
work.  I  have  not  yet  found  one  who  has 
graduated  from  a  university.  Pratt  Insti- 
tute and  the  Teachers'  College  have  colored 
normal  students,  but  they  are  usually  from 
the  South  or  West,  not  New  Yorkers  born. 

Philanthropy  is  opening  up  important  lines 
of  opportunity  to  the  Negro  woman  in  New 
York.  In  1903,  a  colored  graduate  nurse 
secured  an  interview  with  the  Secretary  of 
the  New  York  Charity  Organization  Society, 
and  so  ably  presented  to  him  the  need  of 
Negro  visitors  among  Negroes  that  she  was 
appointed  visiting  nurse  for  the  colored  sick 
who  came  under  the  notice  of  the  Society. 
In  time  the  position  changed  into  that  of  a 


THE  COLORED  WOMAN       159 

colored  district  visitor,  other  colored  nurses 
entering  in  numbers  into  district  nursing 
work.  In  1910,  three  nurses  were  employed 
by  the  Nurses'  Settlement,  two  by  the  Asso- 
ciation for  Improving  the  Condition  of  the 
Poor  of  Manhattan,  and  two  by  the  District 
Nursing  Association  of  Brooklyn.  With  in- 
creased  knowledge  of  the  sickness  and  suffer- 
ing  amid  the  Negro  poor,  and  of  their  need 
of  proper  care  in  their  homes,  the  number  of 
these  nurses  will  doubtless  increase.  Colored 
women  rank  high  among  the  trained  nurses 
of  New  York. 

Other  phihmthropicLJEQik  lately  has  been 
under£aken  by  Negro^_vran^_n  „ni-J^aw  York- 
In  19TÖ7"BesI3es  the  nurses  of  whom  we  have 
spoken,  there  were  at  the  head  of  societies  in 
salaried  positions,  two  settlement  workers^ 
two  matrons  of  day  nurseries,  two  matrons  of 
homes  in  which  much  social  work  was  carried 
on,  many  employees  in  colored  orphan 
asylums,  a  teacher  of  domestic  science  in  a 
home-keeping  flat,  a  traveller's  aid  visitor,  a 
playground  instructor,  besides  workers  in 
various  religious  organizations.  This  does 
not  include  the  many  colored  women  doing 


160  HALF  A  MAN 

social  and  recreation  work  in  the  public 
schools  and  on  the  city's  playgrounds.  In- 
deed,  the  difficulty  in  New  York  is  to  secure 
trained  colored  women  for  Philanthropie 
work,  the  Negro's  attitude  still  being  that 
of  the  great  majority  of  white  women  a  few 
years  ago,  that  love  for  children  and  a  sen- 
timental kindness  constitute  the  requisites 
for  work  among  the  poor.  But  the  school 
of  experience  is  training  workers,  and  as 
the  schools  of  philanthropy  of  New  York, 
Boston,  and  Chicago  also  graduate  colored 
students,  we  shall  have  in  the  North  the 
intelligent,  trained  workers  whom  we  need. 
The  little  kindergarten  girl  who,  with  head 
erect,  walked  past  the  jeering  line  of  boys 
to  the  green  trees  and  soft  grass  of  the 
park  has  her  counterpart  in  many  young 
women  of  New  York.  In  1909,  a  colored 
girl  graduated  from  one  of  the  city's  dental 
Colleges,  the  first  woman  of  her  race  to  take 
this  degree  in  the  state.  From  the  first 
her  success  was  remarkable.  Colored  girls 
with  ability  and  steady  purpose  and  dogged 
determination  have  won  success  in  clerical 
and  business  work;  but  the  last  large  and 


THE   COLORED   WOMAN       161 

efficient  group  is  that  classified  in  the  census 
under  niechanical  and  manufacturing  pur- 
suits:  the  dressmakers,seamstresses,milliners. 
Colored  women  have  always  been  known 
as  good  sewers,  and  recently  they  have 
studied  at  their  trade  in  some  of  the  best 
schools.  From  1904  to  1910,  the  Manhattan 
Trade  School  graduated  thirty-four  colored 
girls  in  dressmaking,  hand  sewing,  and  nov- 
elty  making.  The  public  night  school  on 
West  Forty-sixth  Street,  under  its  able  col- 
ored principal,  Dr.  W.  L.  Bulkley,  since  1907, 
has  educated  hundreds  of  women  in  sewing, 
dressmaking,  millinery,  and  artificial  flower- 
making.  While  the  majority  of  the  pupils 
have  taken  the  courses  for  their  private  use, 
a  large  minority  are  entering  the  business 
World.  They  meet  with  repeated  difficulties; 
white  girls  refuse  to  work  in  shops  with  them, 
private  employers  object  to  their  color,  but 
they  have,  nevertheless,  made  creditable  pro- 
gress.  The  census  reports  the  number  of 
Negro  dressmakers  to  have  quadrupled  in 
the  United  States  from  1890  to  1900.  Some- 
thing  comparable  to  this  increase  in  dress- 
making and  allied  trades  has  taken  place 


162  HALF  A  MAN 

among  the  Negroes  of  New  York,  and  it  has 
come  through  education  and  persistence,  and 
the  increase  of  trade  among  the  colored  group 
itself.  Numbers  of  these  dressmakers  and 
milliners  earn  a  livelihood,  though  often  a 
scanty  one,  from  the  patronage  of  the  people 
of  their  own  race. 

But  despite  her  efforts  and  occasional  suc- 
cesses,  the  colored  girl  in  New  York  meets.^ 
with  severer  race  prejudice  than  the  colored 
man,  and  is  more  persistently  kept  from 
attractive  work.  She  gets  the  job  that  the 
white  girl  does  not  want.  It  may  be  that  the 
white  girls  want  the  wrong  thing,  and  that 
the  jute  mill  and  tobacco  shop  and  flower 
factory  are  more  dangerous  to  health  and 
right  living  than  the  mistress's  kitchen,  but 
she  knows  her  mind,  and  follows  the  business 
that  brings  her  liberty  of  action  when  the 
six  o'clock  whistle  blows.  What  she  desires 
f or  herseif,  however,  she  ref uses  to  her  colored 
neighbor.  Occasionally  an  employer  objects 
to  colored  girls,  but  the  Manhattan  Trade 
School  repeatedly,  in  trying  to  place  its 
graduates,  has  found  that  Opposition  to  the 
Negro  has  come  largely  from  the  working 


THE   COLORED   WOMAN       163 

girls.  Race  prejudice  has  even  gone  so  far 
as  to  prevent  a  colored  woman  from  receiving 
home  work  when  it  entailed  her  waiting  in 
the  same'  sitting-room  with  white  women. 
Of  course,  this  is  not  the  universal  attitude. 
In  friendly  talks  with  hundreds  of  New 
York's  white  women  workers,  I  have  found 
the  majority  ready  to  accept  the  colored 
worker.  Jewish  girls  are  especially  tolerant. 
They  believe  that  good  character  and  decent 
manners  should  count,  not  color;  but  an 
aggressive,  combative  minority  is  quite  sure 
that  no  matter  how  well  educated  or  virtu- 
ous  she  may  be,  no  black  woman  is  as  good 
as  a  white  one.  So  the  few  but  belligerent 
aristocrats  triumph  over  the  many  half- 
ashamed,  timid  democrats. 

The  shirtwaist  makers'  strike  of  1910  was 
so  profoundly  important  in  its  breaking 
down  of  feeling  between  nationalities,  its 
Union  of  all  working  women  in  a  common 
cause,  that  the  colored  girl,  while  very 
slightly  concerned  in  the  strike  itself,  may 
profit  by  the  more  generous  feeling  it  engen- 
dered.  Certainly  an  entrance  into  störe  and 
Workshop  would  be  to  her  immense  advan- 


164  HALF  A  MAN 

tage.  She  needs  the  discipline  of  regulär 
hours,  of  steady  training,  of  order  and  Sys- 
tem. She  needs  also  to  become  part  of  a 
strong  labor  group,  to  share  its  working 
class  ideal,  to  feel  the  weight  of  its  moral 
opinion;  instead  of  looking  into  the  mirror 
of  her  wealthy  mistress,  she  needs  to  reflect 
the  aspirations  of  the  strong,  earnest  women 
who  toil. 

Before  bringing  the  story  of  the  life  of  the 
New  York  colored  working  woman  to  a 
close,  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  look  closely  at 
the  diserimination  practised  against  her,  not 
only  in  her  work,  but  in  her  daily  life.  The 
Negro  comes  North  and  finds  himself  half  a 
man.  Does  the  woman,  too,  come  to  be 
but  half  a  woman  .^  What  is  her  status  in 
the  city  to  which  she  turns  for  opportunity 
and  larger  freedom? 

Four  years  ago,  within  a  few  hours'  time, 
two  stories  were  told  me,  illustrative  of  the 
colored  woman's  status.  Neither  occurred 
in  the  city  of  New  York,  but  both  are  indica- 
tive  of  its  temper.  The  first  I  heard  from 
a  woman  skilled  in  a  difficult  profession,  a 
Canadian  now  residing  in  the  United  States, 


THE  COLORED  WOMAN       165 

and  the  descendant  of  a  fugitive  slave. 
Her  youthful  companions  had  all  been  white, 
and  while  an  African  in  the  darkness  of  her 
skin  and  her  musical  voice,  her  rearing  had 
been  that  of  an  Englishwoman.  "Shortly 
after  Coming  to  New  York,  I  went  for  the 
first  time,"  she  told  me,  "to  a  little  resort  on 
the  Jersey  coast.  A  board  walk  flanked  the 
ocean,  and  on  the  other  side  were  shops 
and  places  of  amusement.  Going  out  one 
morning  with  two  companions,  a  colored 
man  and  woman,  we  turned  into  an  enclosure 
to  examine  a  gaily  painted  merry-go-round. 
The  place  was  open  to  the  public,  and  a  few 
nursery  maids  with  their  charges  were  seated 
about.  The  man  in  our  party,  interested  in 
the  mechanism  of  the  machine,  went  up  to 
it  and  began  to  explain  it  to  us.  Quite  sud- 
denly  a  rough  fellow,  in  charge  of  the  place, 
walked  over  and  called  out,  *Get  out  of  here! 
We  don't  allow  niggers.'  The  attack,  to  me 
at  least,  was  so  overwhelming  that  I  did  not 
move  at  once.  Thereupon  I  was  again 
called  *nigger,'  and  ordered  out. 

"When  I  reached  the  beach,  I  asked  my 
companions  to  leave  me,  and  I  sat  on  a  bench 


166  HALF  A  MAN 

looking  upon  the  waves.  After  a  time  an 
old  woman  came  to  my  side,  and  said  a  little 
timidly,  *What  are  you  thinking  about, 
dearie?'  Looking  in  her  face  I  saw  that  she 
feared  that  I  would  commit  suieide.  *I  am 
thinking,'  I  said  turning  to  her,  *that  I  wish 
the  ocean  might  rise  up  and  drown  every 
white  person  on  the  face  of  the  earth.'  *0h, 
you  mustn't  say  that,'  she  cried  horrified, 
and  left  me.  After  I  cannot  teil  how  many 
minutes  or  hours,  1  returned  to  my  boarding- 
house,  and  then  to  my  home  in  New  York. 
I  had  had  a  great  many  white  friends  in  my 
native  home;  I  had  played  with  them,  eaten 
with  them,  slept  with  them.  Now  I  de- 
stroyed  their  letters,  and  resolved  never  to 
know  them  again.  That  was  my  first  affront 
in  the  United  States,  and  while  I  have 
learned  to  feel  somewhat  differently,  a  little 
to  discriminate,  I  can  never  forget  that  the 
white  people  in  the  North  stand  for  the 
insult  which  was  cast  upon  me." 

On  the  evening  of  the  same  day  I  had 
learned  of  this  happening,  a  man  from  a 
prominent  College  in  New  York  State  told 
me  of  a  Negro  classmate.     "He  was  a  pleas- 


THE  COLORED  WOMAN       167 

ant,  intelligent  fellow  from  the  South,"  he 
Said,  "and  while  I  never  knew  him  well,  I 
was  always  glad  to  see  him.  One  day,  at 
commencement  time,  when  we  were  all  hav- 
ing  our  relatives  about,  he  boarded  my  aar 
with  a  young  colored  woman,  evidently  his 
sister.  Without  a  thought  I  rose,  lifted  my 
hat,  and  gave  her  my  seat.  Never  again 
shall  I  see  such  a  look  of  gratitude  as  that 
which  lighted  up  his  face  when  he  bowed 
in  acknowledgment  of  my  courtesy.  It  re- 
vealed  the  race  question  to  me,  and  yet  I 
had  performed  only  the  simplest  act  of  a 
gentleman." 

In  these  two  incidents  we  see  the  unde- 
cided,  perplexing  position  of  the  Negro 
woman  in  New  York.  Today  she  may  be 
turned  out  of  a  public  resort  as  a  "nigger," 
tomorrow  she  may  receive  the  dues  of  a 
gen tle woman.  And  since,  while  I  write,  I 
hear  the  cry  of  a  class  in  the  Community  who 
adjudge  the  expulsion  necessary  since  the 
other  course  must  lead  at  once  to  social 
equality,  I  make  haste  to  add  that  the  second 
story  did  not  end  in  wedlock.  As  far  as  I 
have  Seen,  it  never  does.     Intermarriage  of 


168  HALF  A  MAN 

white  and  black  in  New  York  is  so  slight  as 
to  be  a  negligible  quantity,  but  amalgama- 
tion  between  the  two  races  is  not  uncommon. 
And  this  we  may  say  with  certainty,  the 
man  most  blatant  against  the  "nigger"  in 
New  York  as  all  over  the  country  is  the 
man  most  ready  to  enter  into  illicit  relation- 
ship  with  the  woman  whom  he  claims  to 
despise.  The  raising  of  the  hat  to  the 
colored  woman  brings  a  diminution  in  sexual 
immorality. 

If  the  Negro  civilization  of  New  York  is 
to  be  lifted  to  a  higher  level,  the  white  race 
must  consistently  play  a  finer  and  more 
generous  part  toward  the  colored  w^oman. 
There  are  many  inherent  difficulties  against 
which  she  must  contend.  Slavery  deprived 
her  of  family  life,  set  her  to  daily  toil  in  the 
field,  or  appropriated  her  mother's  instincts 
for  the  white  child.  She  has  today  the 
diflScult  task  of  maintaining  the  integrity 
and  purity  of  the  home.  Many  times  she 
has  succeeded,  often  she  has  failed,  some- 
times  she  has  not  even  tried.  A  vieious 
environment  has  strengthened  her  passions 
and    degraded    her    from    earliest    girlhood. 


THECOLORED  WOMAN        169 

Beyond  any  people  in  the  city  she  needs  all 
the  encouragement  that  philanthropy,  that 
human  courtesy  and  respect,  that  the  fellow- 
ship  of  the  workers  can  give,  —  she  needs  her 
füll  Status  as  a  woman. 


CHAPTER  VII 

RiCH   AND   POOR 

Of  the  many  nations  and  races  that  dwell 
in  New  York  none,  with  the  exception  of 
the  Chinese,  is  so  aloof  from  us  in  its  social 
life  as  the  Negro.  The  childish  recollec- 
tion  of  an  old  school  friend,  reeently  related 
to  me,  well  illustrates  this.  Across  the  way 
from  where  she  lived  there  was  a  house 
occupied  by  a  family  of  mulattoes.  They 
were  the  quietest  and  least  obtrusive  people 
on  the  block,  and  the  wife,  who  was  known 
to  be  very  beautiful,  on  the  rare  occasions 
when  she  left  her  home,  was  always  veiled. 
The  husband  was  little  seen,  and  the  child, 
a  shy  boy,  never  played  on  the  street.  For 
years  the  family  lived  aloof  from  their 
neighbors,  the  subject  of  hushed  and  mysteri- 
ous  questioning. 

Probably  had  one  of  the  white  women 
dropped  in  some  day  to  say  good-morning 
170 


RICH  AND   POOR  171 

or  to  borrow  a  recipe  book,  the  mystery 
would  have  been  wholly  dispelled,  —  a  pity 
surely  for  the  children.  Few  of  New  York 's 
Citizens  are  so  American  as  the  colored,  few 
show  so  Httle  that  is  unusual  or  picturesque. 
The  educated  Italian  might  have  in  his 
home  some  reHc  of  his  former  country,  the 
Jew  might  show  some  symbol  of  his  relig- 
ion;  but  the  Negro,  to  the  seeker  of  the 
unusual,  would  seem  commonplace.  The 
colored  man  in  New  York  has  no  associa- 
tions  with  his  ancient  African  home,  no 
African  traditions,  no  folk  lore.  The  days 
of  slavery  he  wishes  completely  to  forget, 
even  to  the  loss  of  his  exquisite  plantation 
music.  He  is  ambitious  to  be  conventional 
in  his  manners,  his  customs,  striving  as  far 
as  possible  to  be  like  his  neighbor  —  a  dis- 
tinctly  American  ambition.  In  consequence, 
after  indicating  the  lines  along  which  he  has 
achieved  economic  success,  one  finds  little 
to  describe  in  the  lives  of  the  well-to-do 
that  will  be  of  interest.  And  yet  this  sketch 
would  be  open  to  criticism  if,  after  so  long 
a  survey  of  the  working  class,  it  gave  no 
Space  to  those  Negroes  who  have  achieved 


172  HALF  A  MAN 

a  fair  degree  of  wealth  and  leisure;  and  per- 
haps  the  very  recital  of  the  likeness  of  these 
people  to  those  about  them  may  be  of  im- 
portance,  for  the  great  mass  of  white  Amer- 
icans  are  like  a  vivacious  Kentuekian  of  my 
acquaintance,  who,  on  learning  something  of 
a  well-to-do  Negro  family,  assured  me  that 
she  knew  less  of  such  people  than  she  did 
of  the  Esquimaux. 

Mr.  William  Archer,  in  his  book,  "Through 
Afro- America,"  describes  a  round  of  visits 
to  southern  Negro  homes,  where,  with  touch- 
ing  pride,  his  hostesses  show  their  ma- 
terial  wealth,  or  rather  the  material  wealth  of 
their  race  as  embodied  in  drawing-room, 
dining-room,  and  bedroom.  There  seemed 
to  be  nothing  remarkable  about  the  rooms 
unless  their  very  existence  was  remarkable. 
So  the  interiors  of  colored  homes  in  New 
York  would  reveal  nothing  to  mark  them 
from  the  homes  of  their  neighbors,  save  per- 
haps  the  universal  presence  of  some  musical 
instrument.  In  Brooklyn,  the  Bronx,  and 
in  the  Jersey  suburbs,  Negroes  buy  and  rent 
houses,  sometimes  with  a  few  of  their  race  in 
close  proximity,  sometimes  with  white  neigh- 


RICH  AND  POOR  173 

bors  only  on  the  block.  Brooklyn  seems 
always  to  have  shown  less  race  antagonism 
than  Manhattan  (where,  indeed,  anything 
but  the  apartment  is  beyond  the  pocket- 
book  of  people  of  modest  means),  and  it 
has  been  in  Brooklyn  for  the  past  three 
generations  that  the  well-to-do  colored  fam- 
ilies  with  their  children  have  chiefly  been 
found. 

Much  pleasant  hospitality  and  entertain- 
ment  take  place  behind  these  modest  doors. 
Visitors  are  common,  relatives  from  the  east 
and  west  and  south,  and  little  dinner  and 
supper  parties  are  numerous.  If  church  dis- 
cipline  does  not  interfere,  the  women  have 
their  afternoons  of  whist,  and  despite  church 
discipline,  dancing  is  very  common,  few  en- 
tertainments  proving  successful  without  it. 
To  play  well  upon  some  musical  instrument 
is  almost  a  universal  accomplishment,  and, 
as  with  the  Germans,  f amilies  and  friends 
meet  the  of  teuer  for  this  harmonious  bond. 

The  social  life  of  the  well-to-do  colored 
family  generally  centres  about  the  church, 
and  with  a  regularity  unusual  among  the 
white  people,  father  and  mother  and  chil- 


174  HALF  A  MAN 

dren  attend  tlie  Sunday  and  week-day  meet- 
ings.  Colored  society  is  also  at  the  period 
of  the  bazaar  and  fair,  the  concert  and 
dramatic  entert ainment.  Money  is  raised 
by  this  means  for  the  church,  the  private 
charity,  or  to  Supplement  the  dues  of  the 
mutual  benefit  society.  There  are  a  number 
of  Negroes  in  the  different  large  cities  who 
Support  themselves  by  concerts  and  readings, 
appearing  at  benefits  in  the  North  and 
South,  where  they  receive  a  third  or  a  half  of 
the  receipts.  Amateur  Performances  are  also 
common.  A  young  New  York  College  man, 
one  winter  evening,  saw  two  refined,  remark- 
ably  well-dressed  colored  women  turn  in  at 
the  entrance  of  the  Grand  Central  Palace. 
Purchasing  a  ticket  for  the  benefit,  as  it 
proved,  of  a  colored  day  nursery  (the  enter- 
tainment  netted  $2300),  he  followed  them 
to  find  himself  in  the  Afro-American  social 
World.  For  while  the  amateur  dancing 
and  singing  upon  the  stage  were  pretty 
and  attractive,  the  young  man  was  far  more 
interested  in  the  audience.  "And  the  dis- 
appointing  thing  about  it,"  he  remarked 
in  telling  of  it  afterwards,  "was  that  they 


RICH  AND  POOR  175 

were  exactly  like  other  people."  To  use  the 
newspaper  phrase,  "tliere  was  no  'story."* 
They  were  a  group  of  Amerieans,  trained  in 
the  social  Conventions  of  their  own  land. 

There  are  many  secret  and  benefit  soci- 
eties  among  the  Negroes  in  New  York. 
The  Masons  have  nine  meeting  places;  the 
Elks,  ten  lodges.  The  Odd  Fellows  have 
twenty-two  places  of  meeting.  The  United 
Order  of  True  Reformers,  a  strong  Negro 
Organization  in  the  South,  where  it  con- 
ducts  large  business  enterprises,  has  forty- 
four  head-quarters  in  church  and  hall  and 
private  house,  where  meetings  are  held  twice 
a  month.  Many  benefit  societies  are  closely 
associated  with  the  churches.  Colored  men 
and  women  are  very  busy  with  their  mul- 
titudinous  church  and  society  and  benefit 
meetings.  I  remember  once  attending  an 
evening  service  at  a  colored  church  when 
the  minister  preached  the  sermon  to  the 
benefit  Orders  of  St.  Luke's  and  the  Gal- 
ilean  Fishermen.  The  officers,  some  of  them 
carrying  spears  with  blue  and  red  and  white 
trimmings,  marched  down  the  aisle  and 
took  their  seats  at  the  front  of  the  pulpit. 


176  HALF  A  MAN 

Their  leader  was  in  purple,  wearing  a  huge 
badge  like  a  breastplate  with  yellow  and 
green  stones.  The  women,  equally  promi- 
nent with  the  men,  were  dressed  one  in 
yellow  with  green  over  it,  and  broad  purple 
bands,  two  in  white  with  golden  crowns. 
The  pageant  was  very  pretty,  even  beauti- 
ful,  but  too  artless  in  its  simple  enjoyment 
of  color  and  display  for  the  eonventional 
Society  of  New  York,  and  the  colored  "four 
hundred"  were  not  in  it. 

Who  are  the  four  hundred  in  New  York's 
colored  society?  An  Outsider  would  be 
very  bold  who  should  attempt  to  answer. 
Twenty-five  years  ago  the  New  Yorker  born, 
especially  the  descendant  of  some  prominent 
anti-slavery  worker,  would  have  held  fore- 
most  social  position.  The  taint  of  slavery 
was  far  removed  from  these  people,  who 
looked  with  scorn  upon  arrivals  from  the 
South.  Many  were  proud  of  their  Indian 
blood,  and  told  of  the  freedom  that  came 
to  their  black  ancestors  who  married  Long 
Island  Indians.  But  these  old  New  York 
colored  families,  sometimes  bearing  historic 
Dutch  and  English  names,  have  diminished 


RICH  AND  POOR  177 

in  size  and  importance  as  have  the  old  white 
families  beside  them.  The  younger  genera- 
tion  has  gone  west,  or  has  died  and  left 
no  issue.  And  into  the  city  has  come  a 
continual  stream  of  Southerners  and  more 
recently  West  Indians,  some  among  them 
educated,  ambitious  men  and  women,  füll 
of  the  energy  and  determination  of  the 
immigrant  who  means  to  attain  to  promi- 
nence  in  his  new  home.  These  new-comers 
occupy  many  of  the  pulpits,  are  admitted 
to  the  bar,  practise  medicine,  and  become 
leaders  in  politics,  and  their  wives  are  quite 
ready  to  take  a  prominent  part  in  the  social 
World.  They  meet  the  older  residents,  and 
the  various  groups  intermingle,  though  not 
without  some  friction.  Like  a  country  vil- 
lage,  the  New  York  Negro  social  world 
knows  the  happenings  of  its  neighbors, 
gossips  over  their  shortcomings,  rejoices, 
though  with  something  of  jealousy,  over 
their  successes,  and  has  its  cliques,  its  many 
leaders,  but  also  its  broad-minded  spirits 
who  strive  to  bring  the  whole  village  life 
into  harmony.  1^  ■ 

As  we  have  learned  from  a  study  of  the 


178  HALF  A  MAN 

occupational  life  of  the  Negro,  the  majority 
of  men  and  women  of  means  are  in  the 
professional  class,  or  in  the  eity  or  federal 
Service.  Such  positions  do  not  carry  with 
them  large  incomes,  and  remembering  the 
high  cost  of  hving  in  New  York,  and  the 
exorbitant  rental  paid  by  black  men,  we 
can  see  that,  gauged  by  the  white  man's 
Standard,  the  Negro  with  his  two  or  three  or 
four  thousand  dollars  a  year  is  poor.  Yet 
with  his  very  hmited  income  the  demands 
upon  him  are  enormous.  In  the  first  place, 
he  must  educate  his  children,  and  this  means 
a  large  expenditure,  for  only  in  the  technical 
schools  or  the  College  can  his  boy  or  girl  be 
prepared  for  a  successful  career.  The  white 
boy  may  find  some  business  firm  that  will 
give  him  a  chance  of  advancement,  but  the 
colored  boy  must  receive  such  an  educa- 
tion  as  shall  fit  him  to  start  an  enterprise 
by  himself,  unless  he  enters  public  service. 
So  the  trade  or  professional  school  or  Col- 
lege absorbs  the  savings  of  many  years. 

The  church  is  another  large  recipient  of 
the  Negro's  slender  means.  Watching  the 
dimes  and  quarters  drop  into  the  contribu- 


RICH  AND  POOR  179 

tion  plate  as  the  dark-faced  congregation 
files  past  the  pulpit  on  a  Sunday  evening, 
one  wonders  whether  any  other  people  in 
America  willingly  give  so  large  an  amount 
of  their  income  to  their  religious  organiza- 
tions.  And  not  only  will  money  be  requested 
for  the  church's  need,  but  special  ofFerings 
will  be  given  to  home  and  foreign  mis- 
sion  work.  In  1907,  the  African  Methodist 
Church  alone  raised  $36,000  for  home  and  for- 
eign missions.  The  Baptists  raised  $44,000. 
Educational  work  demands  a  share:  the  Afri- 
can Methodists  support  twenty  schools,  the 
African  Zion  twelve,  and  the  Negro  Baptists 
one  hundred  and  twenty.  The  other  de- 
nominations  do  their  share,  and  the  Negroes 
also  give  to  the  schools  conducted  by  white 
churches  for  their  people.  This  money  comes 
from  all  over  the  country,  and  the  well-to-do 
New  York  Negro  must  contribute  his  part. 
Home  charities  also  help  to  drain  the 
Negro's  purse.  Manhattan  and  Brooklyn 
have  a  number  of  colored  philanthropies, 
orphan  asylums,  old  people's  homes,  rescue 
missions,  Young  Men's  and  Young  Women's 
Christian  Associations,  and  social  Settlements. 


180  HALF  A  MAN 

Some  are  supported  entirely  by  white  people, 
but  the  greater  number  receive  some  contri- 
butions  from  the  colored,  and  a  few  are 
dependent  for  money  upon  that  race  alone. 
Thousands  of  dollars  are  raised  yearly, 
among  the  well-to-do  New  York  Negroes, 
for  these  institutions. 

Yet,  with  all  these  various  philanthropic 
activities,  one  too  frequently  hears  that  the 
Negro  does  not  support  his  own  charities. 
As  though  anything  of  the  sort  could  be 
expected  of  him!  A  little  time  ago,  in 
asking  for  money  for  settlement  work  among 
Negroes,  I  was  asked  in  turn  by  the  exqui- 
sitely  dressed  woman  before  me,  whose  fürs 
and  gown  and  jewels  must  have  represented 
a  year's  salary  of  a  school-teacher,  the  type 
of  wealthy  woman  among  the  colored,  why 
the  well-to-do  Negroes  did  not  support  the 
settlement  themselves.  No  such  question 
is  asked  when  we  demand  money  for  work 
among  the  Italians  or  the  Jews,  who  have 
incomparably  larger  means.  Indeed,  one 
may  question  whether  the  Negro  is  not  too 
generous  for  the  materialistic  city  of  New 
York,  whether  his  successes  would  not  be 


RICH  AND  POOR  181 

greater  were  he  niggardly  toward  himself 
and  others.  He  lives  well,  dresses  well, 
eiijoys  a  good  play,  strives  to  give  every 
advantage  to  his  children,  helps  the  poor  of 
his  race.  To  hold  his  own  today  in  this 
civilization,  he  needs  to  be  taught  to  seek 
first  riches,  waiting  until  much  treasure  has 
been  laid  up  before  he  allows  philanthropy 
to  draw  upon  his  bank  account. 

The  traveller  to  the  British  West  Indies 
jBnds  three  divisions  among  the  inhabitants, 
white,  colored,  and  black,  each  group  hav- 
ing  a  distinct  social  Status.  In  the  United 
States,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  but  two 
groups,  white  and  colored,  or  as  the  latter 
is  now  more  frequently  designated,  Negro, 
the  term  thus  losing  its  original  meaning, 
and  becoming  a  designation  for  a  race. 
But  while  the  white  race  usually  makes  no 
social  distinction  between  the  light  and  the 
dark  Negro,  classing  all  alike,  social  lines 
are  drawn  within  the  color  line.  Years 
ago  these  were  more  common  than  they  are 
now.  Charles  W.  Chesnutt,  the  novelist, 
teils  some  amusing  and  pathetic  stories  of 
distinctions  between  colored  and  black.    One 


182  HALF  A  MAN 

of  his  mulatto  heroes,  upon  finding,  as  he 
thinks,  that  the  congressman  who  is  to  call 
upon  his  daughter  is  a  jet  black  Negro  in- 
stead  of  the  mulatto  he  was  supposed  to  be, 
to  prevent  a  breach  of  hospitality,  invents  a 
case  of  diphtheria  in  the  family  and  quaran- 
tines  the  house,  only  to  learn  later,  to  his 
intense  mortification,  that  he  has  committed 
a  mistake  of  identification,  and  that  the 
congressman  is  light  after  all.  But  this 
story  belongs  with  the  last  generation. 
Black  men,  if  they  are  distinguished  Citizens, 
can  enter  any  colored  society,  and  they  not 
infrequently  marry  hght  wives.  Success,  a 
Position  of  probity  and  importance,  these 
are  attributes  that  count  favorably  for  the 
suitor,  and  as  they  are  quite  as  often  in 
the  man  of  strong  African  lineage  as  in  the 
mulatto,  they  gain  the  desired  end. 

Within  this  little  colored  world  of  a  few 
thousand  souls,  a  drop  in  the  city's  human 
sea,  there  is  great  upheaval  and  turmoil. 
The  North  is  the  Negro's  centre  for  con- 
troversy  regarding  his  rightful  position  in  the 
Commonwealth;  and  in  the  large  cities,  in 
Boston  and  Chicago,  Philadelphia  and  New 


RICH  AND  POOR  183 

York,  the  battle  rages.  The  little  society  is 
often  divided  into  hostile  camps  regarding 
party  politics  or  the  acceptance  of  a  gov- 
ernment  position  that  brings  the  suspicion 
of  a  bribe.  Pohtical,  economic,  educational 
matters  as  they  affect  the  black  race,  these 
are  the  subjects  that  fill  the  mind  of  the 
thoughtful  colored  man  and  woman. 

In  his  "Souls  of  Black  Folk,"  Dr.  Du  Bois 
describes  the  white  man's  tactlessness  when, 
as  always,  he  approaches  the  Negro  with  a 
question  regarding  his  race.  But  the  Negro, 
apart  from  his  personal  home  affairs,  im- 
presses  the  Outsider  as  having  little  eise  as 
subject  for  conversation.  World  politics, 
these  concern  him  only  as  they  affect  the 
race  question.  Australia  is  a  country  where 
the  government  excludes  Africans.  England 
rules  in  South  Africa  and  has  lately  recog- 
nized  the  right  of  African  disfranchisement. 
Germany  in  Africa  is  cruel  to  black  men. 
The  Latin  people  know  no  color  line.  At 
home,  the  conflict  of  capital  and  labor  is 
important  as  the  Negro  wins  or  loses  in  the 
economic  struggle;  the  enfranchisement  of 
woman  is  wise  or  unwise  as  it  would  affect 


184  HALF  A  MAN 

Negro  enfranchisement,  one  colored  thinker 
arguing  against  it  since  it  would  double  the 
white  vote  in  the  South  where  the  Negro  has 
no  pohtical  rights;  literature  is  the  poetry 
of  Dunbar,  the  writing  of  Washington  and 
Du  Bois,  the  Kterature  of  the  Negro  ques- 
tion,  and  art  is  largely  comprised  in  Tan- 
ner's  paintings. 

This  picture  should  not  imply  that  the 
colored  people  of  means  are  without  the 
possibility  of  wide  culture  and  sympathy. 
They  are  perhaps  more  sympathetic  by 
nature  than  the  white  people  about  them. 
But  each  year,  as  the  white  American  grows 
increasingly  conscious  of  race,  as  he  argues 
on  racial  differences,  the  Negro  feels  his 
dark  face,  is  sensitive  to  every  disdainful 
look,  and  separates  himself  from  the  people 
about  him  and  their  problems. 

There  is  a  struggle  against  this.  The 
majority  of  white  people  have  heard,  in  a 
vague  way,  that  there  is  a  difference  of 
opinion  in  the  Negro  world;  and  again, 
vaguely,  that  it  takes  the  form  of  Opposition 
to  Dr.  Booker  T.  Washington  and  industrial 
training.     But    the    difference    of    opinion 


RICH  AND  POOR  185 

among  the  Negroes  is  a  difference  of  Ideals, 
and  reaches  far  beyond  the  controversy  of 
industrial  or  cultural  training,  or  the  ques- 
tion  of  individual  leadership.  It  is  difficult 
to  formulate,  inasmuch  as  few,  if  any, 
Negroes  hold  logically  to  one  ideal  whoUy 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  other.  They  cannot 
be  logical  and  live.  But  their  division  into 
radical  and  conservative  is  too  important  to 
omit;  especially  since,  as  we  have  seen,  there 
is  nothing  in  their  social  life  to  distinguish 
them  from  their  neighbors;  only  in  their 
thoughts  are  they  aloof  from  us  —  aliens 
upon  whose  Shoulders  is  the  problem  of  a 
race. 

How  can  one  explain  these  two  ideals? 
Roughly,  they  accept  or  reject  segregation. 
The  first  looks  upon  the  black  man  in  Amer- 
ica, for  many  generations  at  least,  as  a  race 
apart.  Recognizing  this,  the  race  must  in- 
creasingly  grow  in  self-efficiency.  It  must 
run  its  own  businesses,  own  its  banks,  its 
groceries,  its  restaurants,  have  its  dress- 
makers,  milliners,  tailors;  it  must  establish 
factories  where  it  shall  employ  only  colored 
men  and  women;  its  children  shall  be  brought 


186  HALF  A  MAN 

into  the  world  by  colored  doctors,  taught  by 
colored  teachers,  buried  by  colored  under- 
takers.  Education,  along  industrial  lines, 
shall  help  train  the  worker  to  this  efficiency, 
and  a  proper  race  pride  shall  give  him  the 
patronage  of  the  Negroes  about  him.  When, 
as  will  of  course  happen  in  the  majority  of 
cases,  the  Negro  works  for  the  white  man, 
he  must  consider  himself  and  his  race.  He 
must  not  go  out  on  strike  when  the  white 
man  strives  for  higher  wages;  he  is  justified, 
if  he  is  willing  to  risk  a  broken  head,  in 
filling  the  place  of  the  striking  workman,  for 
he  has  to  look  after  his  own  concerns. 

The  second  point  of  view  resists  segre- 
gation.  It  beheves  that  the  Negro  should 
never  cease  to  struggle  against  being  treated 
as  a  race  apart,  that  he  should  demand  the 
Privileges  of  a  Citizen,  free  access  to  all 
public  institutions,  füll  civil  and  political 
rights.  As  a  workman,  he  should  have  the 
opportunity  of  other  workmen,  his  training 
should  be  the  training  of  his  white  neighbor, 
and  in  business  and  the  professions  he  should 
strive  to  serve  white  as  well  as  black.  And 
just  as  in  the  battle-field  he  fights  in  a  com- 


RICH  AND  POOR  187 

mon  cause  with  his  white  comrade,  so  in  the 
struggle  for  better  working  class  conditions 
he  should  stand  by  the  side  of  the  laborer, 
regardless  of  race.  BeHeving  these  things 
and  finding  that  America  fails  to  meet  his 
demands,  he  thinks  it  should  be  his  part  to 
struggle  for  his  ideal,  vigorously  to  protest 
against  discrimination,  and  never,  compla- 
cent,  to  submit  to  the  position  of  inferiority. 

As  I  have  said,  few  men  hold  logically  to 
either  of  these  ideals,  and  as  that  of  acqui- 
escence  to  present  conditions  is  naturally 
populär  with  the  whites,  who  are  themselves 
responsible  for  discrimination,  material  suc- 
cess  sometimes  means  a  departure  from  the 
aggressive  to  the  submissive  attitude.  How- 
ever,  the  whole  question  of  the  Negro  as  a 
wage  earner  is  yet  scarcely  understood  by 
this  small  professional  and  business  class. 
They  are  in  turmoil,  in  a  virile  struggle, 
harsh,  bewildering,  baffling. 

"I  cannot  conceive  what  it  would  mean 
not  to  be  a  Negro,"  a  prominent  New  York 
colored  man  once  said  to  me.  "The  white 
people  think  and  feel  so  little;  their  life 
lacks  an  absorbing  interest." 


.-/ 


188  HALF  A  MAN 

This  is  the  characteristic  fact  of  the  life 
of  the  well-to-do  Negro  in  New  York.  He 
is  not  permitted  to  go  through  the  city  streets 
in  easy  comfort  of  body  or  mind.  Some 
personal  rebuff,  some  harsh  word  in  news- 
paper  or  magazine,  quickens  his  pulse  and 
rouses  him  from  the  lethargy  that  often 
overtakes  his  comfortable  white  neighbor. 
Looking  into  the  past  of  slavery,  watching 
the  Coming  generation,  the  most  careless  of 
heart  is  forced  into  serious  questioning.  A 
comfortable  income  and  the  intelligence  to 
enjoy  the  culture  of  a  great  city  do  not  bring 
to  the  Negro  any  smug  self-satisfaction;  only 
a  greater  responsibility  toward  the  problem 
that  moves  through  the  world  with  his  dark 
face. 

Before  turning  to  our  last  topic,  the  Negro 
and  the  Municipality,  we  ought  to  note  two 
further  characteristics  of  the  Negro  in  New 
York. 

There  are  certain  statistics  quoted  by 
every  writer  upon  the  Negro,  statistics  of 
mortality  and  crime.  We  have  noted  these 
lor  the  child,  but  not  as  yet  for  the  Negroes 
as  a  whole.     They  have  been  left  until  this 


RICH  AND  POOR 


189 


point  in  our  study  that  we  may  view  them 
in  relation  to  what  we  have  learned  of  the 
Negro's  economic  condition  and  his  environ- 
ment. 

Looking  for  criminal  statistics  first,  we 
find  them  difficult  to  obtain  in  New  York. 
The  Courts'  reports  do  not  classify  by  color, 
but  we  can  learn  something  from  the  census 
enumeration  of  1904  of  the  prisoners  in  the 
New  York  County  Penitentiary  and  the  New 
York  County  Workhouse.  These  are  short 
term  offenders  sent  up  from  the  city  of  New 
York.     The  enumeration  is  as  follows: 


New  York  County  Penitentiary     (Blackwell's  Island) 


Total 

Males 

Females 

Per  Cent 
Total 

Per  Cent 
Females 

White    

Colored  

582 
52 

533 
33 

49 
19 

91.8 

8.2 

8.4 
36.5 

New  York  County  Workhouse 


White    

1126 

870 

256 

96.5 

22.7 

Colored 

41 

12 

29 

3.5 

70.7 

In  view  of  the  proportion  of  Negroes  to 
whites  in  Manhattan,  two  per  cent,  we  find 


190  HALF  A  MAN 

the  percentage  of  colored  prisoners  high,  but 
no  higher  than  we  expect  when  we  remember 
that  the  Negro  occupies  the  lowest  plane  in 
the  industrial  Community,  "the  plane  which 
everywhere  supplies  the  jail,  the  peniten- 
tiary,  the  gallo ws."  ^  But  the  very  large 
percentage  of  crime  among  colored  women 
calls  for  grave  consideration.  In  the  work- 
house,  imprisoned  for  fighting,  for  drunken- 
ness,  for  Prostitution,  the  colored  women 
more  than  double  in  number  the  colored 
men.  Here  is  a  condition  that  we  noted 
in  the  Children's  Court  records:  an  unduly 
large  percentage  of  disorderly  and  depraved 
colored  female  off  enders. 

We  have  already  touched  upon  the  subject 
of  morality  among  colored  women.  Various 
causes,  some  of  which  we  have  noted,  go  to 
the  making  up  of  this  high  percentage  of 
crime.  The  Negroes  themselves  believe  the 
basic  cause  to  be  their  recent  enslavement 
with  its  attendant  unstable  marriage  and 
parental  status.  They  point  to  the  centuries 
of  healthful  home  relationships  among  Amer- 

*Quincy  Ewing,  "The  Heart  of  the  Race  Problem," 
Atlantic  Monthly,  March,  1909. 


RICH  AND   POOR  191 

icans  and  Europeans,  and  contrast  them  with 
the  thousands  upon  thousands  of  yearly 
sales  of  slaves  that  but  two  generations  ago 
disrupted  the  Negro's  attempts  at  family 
life.  With  this  heritage  they  believe  that 
it  is  inevitable  that  numbers  of  their  women 
should  be  slow  to  recognize  the  sanctity  of 
home  and  the  importance  of  feminine  virtue. 

The  mortahty  figures  for  the  New  York 
Negro  are  more  striking  than  the  figures  for 
crime.  In  1908  the  death  rate  for  whites  in 
the  city  was  16.6  in  every  thousand;  for 
colored  (including  Chinese),  28.9,  almost 
double  the  white  rate.  The  Negroes'  great- 
est  excess  over  the  white  was  in  tuberculosis, 
congenital  debility,  and  venereal  diseases  as 
the  table  on  the  following  page  shows. 

The  Negro's  inherent  weakness,  his  in- 
ability  to  resist  disease,  is  a  favorite  topic 
today  with  writers  on  the  color  question. 
A  high  mortality  is  indeed  a  matter  for  grave 
concern,  but  we  may  question  whether  these 
figures  show  inherent  weakness.  If  a  new 
disease  attacks  any  group  of  people,  it  causes 
terrible  decimation,  and  tuberculosis  and 
venereal  diseases,  the  white  man's  plagues, 


192 


HALF  A  MAN 


have  proved  terribly  destructive  to  the  black 
man.  But  recalling  the  conditions  under 
which  the  great  majority  of  the  colored  race 


New  York,  1908, 


Number  of  deaths  from  all  causes  per  1000 

Population 

Number  of  deaths  per  1000  deaths: 

Tuberculosis   

Pneumonia 

Diarrhoea  and  enteritis 

Bright's  disease 

Heart  disease 

Cancer  

Congenital  debility 

Diphtheria  and  croup    

Scarlet  fever   

Typhoid 

Venereal  diseases   

All  others 


White. 


16.6 

136. 

126 
91.8 
78.3 
76.7 
45.5 
24.5 
23.7 
19. 
73 
4. 

367.2 


1000.0       1000.0 


Colored. 


28.9 

232.8 

136.3 

79 

56.5 

83.4 

24.8 

34.1 

15. 

3.2 

6.9 

13.4 

314.6 


lives  in  New  York,  the  long  hours  of  labor, 
the  crowded  rooms,  the  insufficient  food,  we 
find  abundant  cause  for  a  high  death  rate. 
For  poverty  and  death  go  hand  in  hand,  and 
the  Proportion  of  Negroes  in  New  York  who 
live  in  great  poverty  far  exceeds  the  Propor- 
tion of  whites.^ 


The  statistician,  Mr.  I.  B.  Rubinow,  in  a  discussion  of 


RICH  AND  POOR  193 

The  students  at  Hampton  Institute  sing 
an  old  plantation  song  that  runs  like  this: 

*'If  rellgion  was  a  thing  that  money  could  buy, 
The  rieh  would  live  and  the  poor  would  die. 
But  my  good  Lord  has  fixed  it  so 
The  rieh  and  the  poor  together  must  go." 

Some  of  our  rieh  men  seem  to  have  fixed 
it  with  rehgion  to  escape  from  the  condition 
the  poem  describes,  but  it  depicts  a  reahty 
in  the  Negro's  life.  Rieh  and  poor,  as  we 
saw  when  we  left  our  old  New  Yorkers, 
competent  and  inefficient,  pure  and  diseased, 
good  and  bad,  all  go  together.  Much  of  the 
recent   literature  written    by  Negroes,   and 

high  death  rates  (American  Statistical  Association,  December, 
1905)  quotes  the  rate  in  five  agricultural  districts  in  a  province 
of  Russia,  districts  inhabited  by  peasantry  of  a  common  stock. 
With  almost  mathematical  certainty,  prosperity  brings  longer 
life.  He  divides  his  peasants  into  six  groups  showing  their 
death  rate  as  foUows: 

Death  Rate 

Having  no  land 34.7 

Less  than  13.5  acres 32.7 

13.5  to  40.5  acres 30.1 

40.5  to  67.5  acres 25.4 

67.5  acres  to  135  acres 23.1 

More  than  135  acres    19.2 

Mr.  Rubinow  suggests  that  the  high  Negro  death  rate 
may  be  explained  by  noting  the  poorly  paid  occupations  in 
which  the  Negro  engages. 


194  HALF  A  MAN 

especially  that  by  Dr.  Booker  T.  Washington, 
attempts  to  separate  in  the  minds  of  the 
Community  the  thrifty  and  prosperous  col- 
ored  men  from  the  helpless  and  degraded; 
but  the  effort  meets  with  a  hmited  success. 
When  we  can  have  a  Statistical  study  of 
some  thousands  of  the  well-to-do  Negroes 
compared  with  an  equal  number  of  well-to- 
do  whites,  we  may  find  striking  similarity. 
From  my  own  observations  I  find  that  the 
well-to-do  Negroes  bear  and  rear  children, 
refrain  from  committing  crimes  that  put 
them  into  jail,  and  live  to  an  old  age  with 
the  same  success  as  their  white  neighbors. 
But  they  get  little  credit  for  it.  Willy- 
nilly,  the  strong,  intellectual  Negro  is  linked 
to  his  unfortunate  fellow.  Whether  an  in- 
crease  in  material  prosperity  will  break  this 
bond,  or  whether  it  will  continue  until  it 
ceases  to  be  a  bond  as  humanity  comes  into 
its  own,  is  a  secret  of  the  future.  For  today 
the  song  rings  true,  and  the  rieh  and  the 
poor  go  together. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Negro  and  the  Municipality 

A  CAPRicious  mood,  varying  with  the 
individual,  considerate  today  and  offensive 
tomorrow,  this,  as  far  as  our  observations 
have  led  us,  has  been  New  York's  attitude 
toward  the  Negro.  Is  it  possible  to  find  any 
principle  underlying  this  shifting  position? 
The  city  expresses  itself  through  the  indi- 
vidual actions  of  its  changing  four  milHons 
of  people,  but  also  through  its  government, 
its  courts  of  justice,  its  manifold  public 
activities.  Out  of  these  various  manifesta- 
tions  of  the  community's  spirit  can  we  find  a 
Negro  policy?  Has  New  York  any  principle 
of  conduct  toward  these  her  colored  Citizens? 
This  question  should  be  worth  our  considera- 
tion,  for  New  York's  attitude  means  its 
environmental  influence,  and  helps  determine 
for   the  newly   arrived   immigrant  and   the 

growing  generation  whether  justice  or  intol- 
195 


196  HALF  A  MAN 

erance  shall  mark  their  dealings  with  the 
black  race. 

The  first  matter  of  civic  importance  to  the 
Negro,  as  to  every  other  New  York  resident, 
is  his  Position  in  the  Commonwealth;  is  he  a 
participant  in  the  government  under  which 
he  Hves,  or  a  subjeet  without  pohtical  rights? 
The  law  since  1873  has  been  explicit  on  this 
matter,  wiping  out  former  property  qualifi- 
cations,  and  giving  füll  manhood  suffrage. 
Probably,  even  with  a  much  larger  influx 
of  colored  people,  the  tity  will  never  agitate 
this  question  again.  Since  the  death  of  the 
Know-nothing  Party,  New  York  has  ceased 
any  organized  attempt  to  lessen  the  power 
of  the  foreigner,  and  the  growing  cosmopoli- 
tan  character  of  the  population  strengthens 
the  Negro  in  his  rights.  Only  in  those  states 
where  the  white  population  is  homogeneous 
can  Negro  disfranchisement  successfully  take 
place. 

With  the  vote  the  Negro  has  entered  into 
politics  and  has  maintained  successful  polit- 
ical  organizations.  The  necessity  of  paying 
for  rent  and  food  out  of  eight  or  ten  dollars 
a  week  is  the  Negro's   immediate  issue  in 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY    197 

New  York,  and  he  tries  to  meet  it  by  securing 
a  congenial  and  more  lucrative  job.  The 
eity  in  1910  showed  some  consideration  for 
him  in  this  matter.  An  Assistant  District 
Attorney  and  an  Assistant  Corporation  Coun- 
sel  were  colored,  and  scattered  throughout 
the  city  departments  were  nine  clerks  making 
from  $1200  to  $1800  apiece,  and  a  dozen 
more  acting  as  messengers,  inspectors,  driv- 
ers,  attendants,  receiving  salaries  averaging 
$1275.  Three  doctors  served  the  Board  of 
Health,  and  there  were  six  men  on  the  pohce 
force  (none  given  patrol  duty),  and  one  first 
grade  fireman,  while  the  departments  of 
docks,  parks,  street  cleaning,  and  water  sup- 
ply  employed  470  colored  laborers.  Alto- 
gether  511  colored  men  figure  aniong  the 
city's  employees.^ 

In  her  communal  gifts  the  city  acts  toward 
the  Negro  with  a  fair  degree  of  impartiality. 
At  the  public  schools  and  libraries,  the  parks 
and  playgrounds,  the  baths,  hospitals,  and, 
last,  the  almshouse,  the  blacks  have  equal 
rights  with  the  whites.     Occasionally  indi- 

*  The  total  number  of  municipal  employees  is  55,006  — 
Negro  employees,  511  —  Percentage  of  Negro  to  whole,  0.9. 


198  HALF  A  MAN 

vidual  public  servants  show  color  prejudice, 
but  again,  occasionally,  especial  kindness 
attends  the  black  child.  The  rüde  treat- 
ment  awaiting  them,  however,  from  other 
visitors  keeps  many  Negro  children,  and 
men  and  women,  from  enjoying  the  city's 
benefactions.  Particularly  is  this  true  with 
the  pubhc  baths  and  with  some  of  the  play- 
grounds.  The  employment  by  the  city  of 
at  least  one  colored  offieial  in  every  neigh- 
borhood  where  the  Negroes  are  in  great 
numbers  would  do  much  to  remedy  this 
condition. 

One  department  of  the  city  might  be  cited 
as  having  been  an  exception  to  the  rule  of 
reasonably  fair  treatment  to  the  colored 
man.  Harshness,  for  no  cause  but  his  black 
face,  has  been  too  frequently  bestowed  upon 
the  Negro  by  the  police.  This  has  been 
especially  noticeable  in  conflicts  between 
white  and  colored,  when  the  white  officer, 
instead  of  dealing  impartially  with  offenders, 
protected  his  own  race. 

There  have  been  two  conflicts  between  the 
whites  and  Negroes  in  New  York  in  recent 
years,  the  first  in  1900,  on  the  West  Side,  in 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY     199 

the  forties,  the  second  in  1905,  on  San  Juan 
Hill.  Each  riot  was  local,  representing  no 
wide-spread  excitement  comparable  to  the 
draft  riots  of  1863,  and  in  each  case  the  police 
might  easily  in  the  beginning  have  stopped  all 
fighting.  Instead,  they  showed  themselves 
ready  to  aid,  even  to  instigate  the  conflict. 

^he  riot  of  1900  was  caused  by  the  death 
of  a  policeman  at  the  hands  of  a  Negro. 
The  black  man  declared  that  he  was  defend- 
ing  his  life,  but  the  officer  was  populär,  and 
after  his  funeral  riots  began.  Black  men  ran 
|o  the  police  f or  ^protection,  and  were  thro wn 
back  by  them  into  the  hands  of  the  mob.^ 

The  riot  of  1905  commenced  on  San  Juan 
Hill  one  Friday  evening  in  July  with  a 
fracas  between  a  colored  boy  and  a  white 
peddler;  both  races  took  a  hand  in  the  matter 
until  the  side  streets  showed  a  rough  scram- 
bling  fight.  Saturday  and  Sunday  were 
comparatively  quiet;  men,  black  and  white, 
stood  on  Street  corners  and  scowled  at  one 
another,  but  nothing  further  need  have 
occurred,  had  each  race  been  treated  with 

1  "Story  of  the  Riot,"  published  by  Citizens  Protective 
League.      |_. 


^p.\/€  W)^ 


200  HALF  A  MAN 

justice.  The  police,  however,  instead  of 
keeping  the  peace,  angered  the  Negroes, 
urged  on  their  enemies,  and  by  Monday 
night  found  that  they  had  helped  create  a 
riot,  this  time  bitter  and  dangerous.  Over- 
zealous  to  proceed  against  the  "niggers," 
officers  rushed  into  places  frequented  by 
peaceable  colored  men,  whom  they  placed 
under  arrest.  Dragging  their  victims  to  the 
station-house  they  beat  them  so  unmerci- 
fully  that  before  long  many  needed  to  be 
handed  over  to  another  eity  department  — 
the  hospitaL  Little  question  was  made  as 
to  guilt  or  innocence,  and  some  of  the  worst 
offenders,  colored  as  well  as  white,  were 
never  brought  to  justice.^  "  If,"  as  a  colored 
preacher  whose  church  was  the  centre  of  the 
storm  district  pointed  out,  "the  police 
would  only  differentiate  between  the  good 
and  the  bad  Negroes,  and  not  knock  on  the 
head  every  colored  man  they  saw  in  a  riot, 
we  should  be  quite  satisfied.  As  it  is,  there 
is  no  safety  for  any  Negro  in  this  part  of  the 
city  at  any  time."^ 

1  New  York  Age,  July  27,  1905. 
^  New  York  Tribüne,  July  24,  1905. 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY    201 

The  result  of  these  two  riots  was  the  bring- 
ing  to  justice  of  one  policeman  and  the 
placing  of  a  humane  and  tactful  captain  on 
San  Juan  Hill.  But  for  some  time  the  colored 
man  feit  little  protection  in  the  Department 
of  Police,  finding  that  he  was  liable  to  arrest 
and  clubbing  for  a  trivial  offence.  Often 
the  officer's  club  feil  with  cruel  force.  This, 
however,  was  before  the  administration  of 
Mayor  Gaynor,  who  has  commanded  humane 
treatment,  and  the  brutal  clubbing  of  the 
New  York  Negro  has  now  ceased. 

From  the  police  one  turns  naturally  to  the 
courts.  What  is  their  attitude  toward  the 
Negro  off  ender?  Is  there  any  race  prejudice, 
or  do  black  and  white  enjoy  an  impartial  and 
judicial  hearing? 

As  the  Negro  comes  before  the  magistrates 
of  the  city  courts,  he  learns  to  know  that 
judges  differ  greatly  in  their  conceptions  of 
justice.  To  the  Southerner,  let  us  say  from 
Richmond,  where  the  black  man  is  arrested 
for  small  offences  and  treated  with  consider- 
able  roughness  and  harshness,  New  York 
courts  seem  lenient.^     To  the  West  Indian, 

^A  southern  Student  says,  "The  Negro  in  Richmond   is 


202  HALF  A  MAN 

accustomed  to  British  rule,  justice  in  New 
York  is  noticeable  for  its  variability,  the 
likelihood  that  if  it  is  severe  tonight,  it  will 
be  generous  tomorrow. 

"Three  months,"  the  listener  at  court 
hears  given  as  sentence  to  a  respectable- 
looking  colored  servant  girl  who  has  begged 
to  be  allowed  to  return  to  her  place  which 
she  has  held  for  five  years.  *'I  never  was 
up  for  drinking  before,"  she  pleads;  "I  have 
learnt  my  lesson;  please  give  me  a  chance; 
I  will  not  do  this  again." 

"What  should  you  two  be  fighting  for?" 
another  judge,  another  morning,  says  to  two 
very  battered  women,  one  white  and  one 
colored,  who  come  before  him  in  court. 
And  talking  kindly  to  both,  but  with  greater 
seriousness  to  the  Irish  offender,  his  own 
countrywoman,  he  sends  them  away  with  a 
reprimand. 

How  much  of  this  unequal  treatment  comes 

arrested  for  small  offences  and  fined  in  the  city  courts.  He  is 
treated  with  considerable  roughness  and  harshness  in  his 
punishment  for  these  offences.  It  looks  as  though  he  were 
being  imposed  upon  as  an  individual  of  the  lower  strata  of 
Society.  But  the  Negro  responds  so  impulsively  to  what 
appeals,  that  constant  fear,  dread,  and  impressiveness  of  the 
poUce  act  well  as  resistants  to  temptations." 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY    203 

from  color  prejudice  or  caprice  or  tempera- 
ment,  the  Negro  is  unable  to  decide,  but  he 
soon  learns  one  curious  fact:  while  his  black 
skin  marks  him  as  inheriting  Republican 
politics,  it  is  the  Democratic  magistrate,  the 
Tammany  henchman  whose  name  is  a  by- 
word  to  the  righteous,  who  is  the  more 
lenient  when  he  has  committed  a  trifling 
offence. 

**Didn't  I  play  craps  with  the  nigger  boys 
when  I  was  a  kid?"  one  of  these  well-known 
poHticians  says,  **and  am  I  going  back  on 
the  poor  fellows  now?"  Of  course,  the 
Negro  is  assured  such  men  only  want  his 
vote,  but  he  beheves  real  sympathy  actuates 
the  Tammany  leader,  who  is  too  busy  to 
bother  whether  the  man  before  him  is  black 
or  white.  The  reformer,  on  the  other  hand, 
big  with  dignity,  at  times  makes  him  vastly 
uncomfortable  as  he  lectures  upon  the  Negro 
Problem  from  the  eminence  of  the  superior 
race. 

But  whether  Republican  or  Democrat,  the 
Negro  learns  that  it  is  well  to  have  a  friend 
at  court;  that  helplessness  is  the  worst  of  all 
disabilities,  worse  than  darkness  of  skin  or 


204  HALF  A  MAN 

poverty.  So  he  soon  becomes  acquainted 
with  his  local  politician,  and  if  his  friend  is 
in  trouble,  or  his  wife  or  son  is  locked  up, 
pounds  vigorously  at  the  politician's  door. 
It  may  be  midnight,  but  the  man  of  power 
will  dress,  and  together  they  will  turn  from 
the  dark  tenement  hall  into  the  lighted  street 
and  on  to  the  police-station  or  magistrate's 
court  to  seek  release  for  the  offender.  That 
too  often  the  gravity  of  the  offence  weighs 
little  in  the  securing  of  lenient  treatment  is 
part  of  the  muddle  of  New  York  justice. 
The  Negro  finds  that  he  has  taken  the  most 
direct  way  to  secure  relief. 

As  far  as  we  have  followed,  we  have  found 
the  municipality  of  New  York  generally 
ready  to  treat  her  black  Citizens  with  the 
same  justice  or  injustice  with  which  she 
treats  her  whites.  Exceptions  occur,  but  she 
does  not  often  draw  the  color  line.  Perhaps, 
in  this  connection,  it  might  be  well  to  stop 
a  moment  and  see  what  return  the  black 
man  makes,  whether  by  his  vote  he  helps 
secure  to  the  city  honest  and  efficient  gov- 
ernment. 

Walking  through  a  Negro  quarter  on  elec- 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY    205 

tion  day,  the  most  careful  search  fails  to  re- 
veal  any  such  far-sighted  altruism.  With  a 
great  majority  of  colored  voters  the  choice  of 
a  municipal  candfdate  is  based  on  the  argu- 
ment  of  a  two-dollar  bill  or  the  promise  of  a 
Job,  combined  with  the  sentiment,  decreas- 
ing  every  year,  for  the  Repubhcan  Party  — 
the  party  that  once  helped  the  colored  man 
and,  he  hopes,  may  help  him  again.  The 
pubhc  Standing  of  the  mayoralty  candidate, 
his  abihty  to  choose  wise  heads  of  depart- 
ments,  the  building  of  new  subways,  the 
ownership  of  public  Utilities,  these  are  un- 
important  issues.  The  matter  of  immedi- 
ate  moment  is  what  this  vote  is  going  to 
mean  to  the  black  voter  himself. 

Such  a  selfish  and  unpatriotic  attitude, 
not  unknown  perhaps  to  white  voters,  leads 
some  of  our  writers  and  reformers  to  doubt 
the  value  of  universal  manhood  suffrage. 
Mr.  Ray  Stannard  Baker  teils  us  that  the 
Negro  and  the  poor  white  in  New  York, 
through  their  venality,  are  practically  with- 
out  a  vote.  "While  the  South  is  disfran- 
chising  by  legislation,"  he  says,  "the  North 
is  doing  it  by  cash."     "What  eise  is  the 


S06  HALF  A  MAN 

meaning  of  Tammany  Hall  and  the  boss 
and  machine  System  in  other  eitles?"^  New 
York's  noted  ethical  culture  teacher  argues 
against  agitation  for  woman's  suffrage  on 
the  ground  that  so  many  of  those  who  now 
have  the  vote  do  not  know  how  to  use  it. 
But  looking  closely  at  these  unaltruistic  Citi- 
zens, we  see  that  after  all  they  are  putting 
the  ballot  to  its  primary  use,  the  protection 
of  their  own  interests.  The  Negro  in  New 
York  has  one  vital  need,  steady,  decent  work. 
He  dickers  and  plays  with  politics  to  get  as 
much  of  this  as  he  can.  It  is  very  insuffi- 
cient  relief  for  an  intolerable  Situation,  but 
it  is  partial  relief.  In  another  city,  Atlanta 
for  instance,  he  might  find  education  the 
most  important  civic  gift  for  which  to  strive. 
Atlanta  is  a  fortunate  city  to  choose  for  an 
example  of  the  power  of  the  suffrage,  for 
since  the  Negro's  loss  of  the  vote  in  Georgia, 
educational  funds  have  been  turned  chiefly 
to  white  schools,  and  5,000  colored  children 
are  without  opportunities  for  public  educa- 
tion. 1885  saw  the  last  school  building 
erected  for  Negroes,  the  result  of  a  bargain 

*  Ray  Stannard  Baker,  "Folio wing  the  Color  Line,"  p.  269. 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY    207 

between  the  colored  voters  and  tlie  prohibi- 
tionists.^  Should  a  colored  teacher  in  New 
York  be  refused  her  certificate,  a  colored 
consumptive  be  denied  a  place  in  the  city's 
hospital,  a  colored  child  meet  with  a  rebuff 
in  the  city  park,  the  colored  citizen  would 

^  The  foUowing  story  of  Athens,  Georgia,  told  by  a  North- 
emer  teaching  in  the  South,  illustrates  this  point.  "The  city 
of  Athens  was  planning  to  inaugurate  a  pubhc  school  System, 
and  also  wished  to  'go  dry.'  It  made  a  proposal  to  the  col- 
ored voters  promising  that  if  their  combined  vote  would 
carry  the  city,  two  schools  should  be  built,  of  equal  size  and 
similar  structure  for  eaeh  race.  I  visited  Athens  shortly  after 
the  two  buildings  were  built,  and  I  found  two  beautiful  brick 
buildings  very  similar  in  all  their  appointments.  At  an  inter- 
val  of  several  years  I  again  visited  the  little  city  and  again 
spent  an  hour  in  the  same  brick  school-house  of  the  colored 
folk. 

"At  my  third  visit,  I  found  my  colored  friends  occupying 
a  wooden  structure  on  the  edge  of  the  city,  and  not  only  incon- 
veniently  located,  but  much  less  of  a  building  than  the  one 
hitherto  occupied.  üpon  inquiry  I  found  that  in  the  growth 
of  the  school  population  of  the  whites,  it  was  cheaper  to  seize 
the  building  formerly  occupied  by  the  colored  children,  and  to 
build  for  them  a  cheap  wooden  structure  on  the  outskirts  of 
the  town. 

"The  colored  school  was  still  occupying  this  inadequate 
building  at  my  visit  this  last  September,  1909.  A  second 
wooden  structure  has  been  added  to  the  colored  equipment 
on  the  east  side  of  the  town." 

This  story  of  the  Athenians  well  illustrates  what  will  be 
done  when  the  Negro  counts  for  something  politically,  and 
also  what  may  be  undone  if  his  value  as  a  political  asset  is 
reduced. 


208  HALF  A  MAN 

find  his  vote  an  important  means  of  redress. 
Then,  too,  while  there  are  so  many  men  to 
biiy,  it  is  important  to  have  a  vote  to  seil, 
lest  the  other  Citizens  secure  the  morning's 
bargains.  Venality  in  high  and  low  places 
will  not  disappear  until  we  are  dominated 
by  the  ideal  of  social,  not  individual  advance- 
ment.  Before  that  time,  it  is  well  for  the 
weak  that  they  are  able,  at  least  in  the 
political  field,  to  bargain  with  the  strong. 

The  importance  to  the  Negro  of  the  vote 
is  quickly  appreciated  when  we  consider  New 
York's  attitude  unofficially  expressed.  With 
the  franchise  behind  him  the  colored  man 
can  secure  for  himself  and  his  children 
the  municipality's  advantages  of  education, 
health,  amusement,  philanthropy.  He  is 
here  a  Citizen,  a  contributor  to  the  city 
treasury,  if  not  directly  as  a  taxpayer,  as  a 
worker  and  renter.  But  as  a  private  indi- 
vidual, seeking  to  use  the  Utilities  managed 
by  other  private  individuals,  he  continu- 
ally  encounters  race  discrimination.  Private 
doors  are  closed,  and  were  the  state  not  so 
wealthy  and  generous,  disabilities  still  graver 
than  at  present  would  follow. 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY    209 

A  few  examples  will  show  the  condition. 
A  Negro  applies  by  letter  for  admission  to 
an  automobile  school,  and  is  accepted;  but 
on  appearing  with  his  fee  bis  color  debars 
bis  entrance.  Carrying  the  case  to  court, 
the  complaint  is  dismissed  on  the  ground 
that  the  law  which  forbade  exclusion  from 
places  of  education  on  account  of  race 
and  color  is  applicable  only  to  public 
schools.  Private  institutions  may  do  as 
they  desire. 

Again,  a  colored  man  tries  to  get  a  meal. 
At  the  first  restaurant  he  is  told  that  all 
the  tables  are  engaged;  at  the  next  no  one 
will  serve  him.  Fearful  of  further  rebuffs, 
he  has  to  turn  to  the  counter  of  a  railway 
Station.  He  wants  to  go  to  the  theatre. 
Like  Tommy  Atkins,  he  is  sent  to  the  gallery 
or  round  the  music  halls.  The  white  barber 
whose  shop  he  enters  will  not  shave  him; 
and  when  night  comes,  he  searches  a  long 
time  before  the  hotel  appears  that  will  give 
him  a  bed.  The  sensitive  man,  still  more 
the  sensitive  woman,  often  finds  the  city's 
attitude  difficult  to  endure. 

American  Negroes  have  become  familiär 


210  HALF  A  MAN 

with  racial  lines,  but  the  foreigner  of  African 
descent,  a  visitor  to  the  city,  meets  with 
rebuffs  that  fill  him  with  surprise  as  well  as 
rage.  Haytians  and  South  Americans,  men 
of  Continental  education  and  wide  culture, 
have  been  ordered  away  as  "niggers"  from 
restaurant  doors,  and  at  the  box  office  of 
the  theatre  refused  an  orchestra  seat.  Eng- 
lish  Negroes  from  the  West  Indies,  men  and 
women  of  character  and  means,  learn  that 
New  York  is  a  spot  to  be  avoided,  and  cross 
the  ocean  when  they  wish  to  taste  of  city 
life.  In  short,  the  stranger  of  Negro  descent, 
if  he  be  rash  of  temper,  hurls  anathemas  at 
the  villainously  mannered  Americans;  or,  if 
he  be  good-natured,  shrugs  his  Shoulders  and 
counts  New  York  a  provincial  settlement  of 
four  million  people. 

Northern  Negroes  believe  this  discrimina- 
tion  in  public  places  against  the  black  man 
to  be  increasing  in  New  York.  One,  who 
came  here  fifteen  years  ago,  teils  of  the  simple 
and  adequate  test  by  which  he  learned  that 
he  had  reached  the  northern  city.  Born  in 
South  Carolina,  as  he  attained  manhood  he 
desired  larger  self-expression,  broader  human 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY    211 

relations  —  he  wanted  "to  be  free,"  as  he 
again  and  again  expressed  it.  So  leaving 
the  cotton  fields  he  started  one  morning 
to  walk  to  New  York.  After  a  number  of 
days  he  entered  a  large  city  and,  uncertain 
in  his  geography,  decided  that  this  was  his 
journey's  end.  "I'll  be  free  here,"  he 
thought,  and  opening  the  door  of  a  brightly 
lighted  restaurant  started  to  walk  in.  The 
white  men  at  the  tables  looked  up  in 
astonishment,  and  the  proprietor,  laying  his 
hand  on  the  youth's  Shoulder,  invited  him, 
in  strong  southern  accent,  to  go  into  the 
kitchen.  "I  reckon  I'm  not  North  yet,"  the 
Negro  Said,  smiling  a  bright,  boyish  smile. 
Interested  in  his  visitor's  appearance,  the 
proprietor  took  him  into  another  room,  gave 
him  a  good  supper,  and  talked  with  him  far 
into  the  night,  urging  the  advantages  of  his 
staying  in  the  South.  But  the  youth  shook 
his  head,  and  the  next  morning  trudged  on. 
At  length  he  reached  a  rushing  city,  tumult- 
uous  with  humanity,  and  entering  an  eating- 
house  was  served  a  meal.  To  him  it  was 
almost  a  sacrament.  He  belonged  not  to  a 
race  but  to  humanity.     He  tasted  the  freedom 


212  HALF  A  MAN 

of  passing  unnoticed.  But  it  is  doubtful 
if  the  same  restaurant  would  serve  him 
today. 

Color  lines,  on  these  matters  of  entertain- 
ment  as  on  others,  are  not  hard  and  fast.  A 
few  hoteis,  chiefly  those  frequented  by  Latin 
peoples,  receive  eolored  guests;  and  while 
the  foreign  Negro  meets  with  rudeness,  he 
is  rebuffed  less  than  the  native.  "I  can't 
get  into  that  place  as  a  southern  darky,"  a 
black  man  laughingly  says,  pointing  to  a 
fashionable  restaurant,  "I'll  be  the  Prince 
of  Abyssinia."  But  as  Prince  or  American 
his  Status  is  shifting  and  uncertain;  here, 
preeminently,  he  is  half  a  man. 

Discrimination  against  any  man  because  of 
his  color  is  contrary  to  the  law  of  the  state. 
After  the  fifteenth  amendment  became  a 
law,  New  York  passed  a  civil  rights  bill, 
which  as  it  Stands,  re-enacted  in  1909,  is 
very  explicit.  All  persons  within  the  Juris- 
diction of  the  State  are  entitled  to  the  accom- 
modation  of  hoteis,  restaurants,  theatres, 
music  halls,  barbers'  shops,  and  any  person 
refusing  such  accommodation  is  subject  to 
civil   and   penal   action.     The   offence  may 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY    213 

be    punished    by   fine   or   imprisonment   or 
both.i 

In  1888,  the  attempt  to  exclude  three 
colored  men  from  a  skating-rink  at  Bingham- 
ton,  N.  Y.,  led  to  a  suit  against  the  owner 
of  the  rink,  and  his  conviction.     The  case^ 

1  Civil  Rights  Law,  State  of  New  York.  Chapter  14  of 
the  Laws  of  1909,  being  Chapter  6  of  the  Consolidated  Laws. 

"Article  4.  — Equal  rights  in  places  of  public  amusement. 

"  Section  40.  —  All  persons  within  the  Jurisdiction  of  this 
State  shall  be  entitled  to  the  füll  and  equal  accommodations, 
advantages,  facilities,  and  Privileges  of  inns,  restaurants, 
hoteis,  eating  houses,  bath  houses,  barber  shops,  theatres, 
music  halls,  public  conveyances  on  land  and  water,  and  all 
other  places  of  public  accommodation  or  amusement,  subject 
only  to  the  conditions  and  Hmitations,  established  by  the  law 
and  applicable  alike  to  all  Citizens. 

"Section  41.  —  Penalty  for  violation.  Any  person  who 
shall  violate  any  of  the  provisions  of  the  foregoing  section  by 
denying  to  any  Citizen,  except  for  reasons  applicable  alike  to 
all  Citizens  of  every  race,  creed  and  color,  and  regardless  of 
race,  creed  and  color,  the  füll  enjoyment  of  any  of  the  accom- 
modations, advantages,  facilities  or  Privileges  in  said  section 
enumerated,  or  by  aiding  or  inciting  such  denial,  shall,  for 
every  such  offence,  forfeit  and  pay  a  sum  not  less  than  one 
hundred  dollars  nor  more  than  five  hundred  doUars  to  the 
person  aggrieved  thereby,  to  be  recovered  in  a  court  of  com- 
petent  Jurisdiction  in  the  County  where  said  offence  was  com- 
mitted,  and  shall  also,  for  every  such  offence,  be  deemed  guilty 
of  a  misdemeanor,  and  upon  conviction  thereof  shall  be  fined 
not  less  than  one  hundred  dollars  nor  more  than  five  hundred 
dollars,  or  shall  be  imprisoned  not  less  than  thirty  days  nor 
more  than  ninety  days,  or  both  such  fine  and  imprisonment." 

2  People  vs.  King,  110  N.  Y.,  418,  1888. 


214  HALF  A  MAN 

reached  the  Court  of  Appeals,  where  the 
constitutionality  of  the  civil  rights  bill 
was  upheld.  "It  is  evident,"  said  Justice 
Andrews  in  his  decision,  "that  to  exclude 
colored  people  from  places  of  public  resort 
on  account  of  their  race  is  to  fix  upon  them 
a  brand  of  inferiority,  and  tends  to  fix  their 
Position  as  a  servile  and  dependent  people." 
But  despite  the  law  and  precedent,  the 
civil  rights  bill  is  violated  in  New  York. 
Occasionally  colored  men  bring  suit,  but  the 
magistrate  dismisses  the  complaint.  Usually 
the  evidence  is  declared  insufficient.  A  case 
of  a  colored  man  refused  orchestra  seats  at 
a  theatre  is  dismissed  on  the  ground  that 
not  the  proprietor  but  his  employees  turned 
the  man  away.  A  keeper  of  an  ice-cream 
parlor,  wishing  to  prevent  the  colored  man 
from  patronizing  him,  charges  a  Negro  a 
dollar  for  a  ten-cent  plate.  The  customer 
pays  the  dollar,  keeps  the  check,  and  brings 
the  case  to  court.  Ice-cream  parlors  are 
then  declared  not  to  come  under  the  list  of 
places  of  public  entertainment  and  amuse- 
ment.  A  bootblack  refuses  to  polish  the 
shoes  of  a  Negro,  and  the  court  decides  that 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY    215 

a  bootblack-stand  is  not  a  place  of  public 
accommodation,  and  refusal  to  shine  tlie 
shoes  of  a  colored  man  does  not  subject  its 
proprietor  to  the  penalties  imposed  by  the 
law.^  This  last  case  was  carried  to  the 
Court  of  Appeals,  and  the  adverse  judgment 
has  led  many  of  the  thoughtful  colored  men 
of  the  city  to  doubt  the  value  of  attempting  to 
push  a  civil  rights  suit.  Litigation  is  expen- 
sive,  and  money  spent  in  any  personal  rights 
case  that  attacks  private  business,  whether 
the  plaintiff  be  white  or  colored,  is  usually 
wasted.  The  civil  rights  law  is  on  the  books, 
and  the  psychological  moment  may  arrive 
to  insist  successfully  on  its  enforcement. 

If  there  is  an  increase  in  discrimination 
against  the  Negro  in  New  York  solely  be- 
cause  of  his  color,  it  is  a  serious  matter  to 
the  city  as  well  as  to  the  race.  Every  Com- 
munity has  its  social  conscierice  built  up  of 
slowly  accumulated  experiences,  and  it  can- 
not  without  disaster  lose  its  ideal  of  justice 
or  generosity.  New  York  has  never  been  ten- 
der  to  its  people,  but  it  has  a  rough  hospital- 
ity,   what   Stevenson   describes   as   "uncivil 

1  Burke  vs.  Bosso,  180  N.  Y.,  31-1,  1905. 


216  HALF  A  MAN 

kindness,"  and  welcomes  new-comers  with  a 
friendly  shove,  bidding  them  become  good 
Americans.  After  the  war,  the  Negro  en- 
tered more  than  formerly  into  this  general 
welcome.  He  was  unnoticed,  allowed  to  go 
his  way  without  questioning  word  or  stare, 
the  Position  which  every  right-minded  man 
and  woman  desires.  But  today  New  York 
has  become  conscious  that  he  is  dark-skinned, 
and  her  attitude  affects  her  growing  children. 
"I  never  noticed  colored  people,"  an  old 
abolitionist  said  to  me,  "I  never  reahzed 
there  were  white  and  black  until,  when  a  boy 
of  twelve,  I  entered  a  church  and  found 
Negroes  occupying  seats  alone  in  the  gal- 
lery."  As  New  York  returns  to  the  gallery 
seats,  her  boys  and  girls  return  to  conscious- 
ness  of  color  and,  from  fisticuffs  at  school, 
move  on  to  the  race  riots  upon  the  streets 
with  bullets  among  the  stones. 

The  municipahty,  as  we  have  seen,  treats 
the  Negro  on  the  whole  with  justice;  its 
Standard  is  higher  than  the  Standard  of  the 
average  Citizen.  It  cherishes  the  ideal  of  de- 
mocracy,  and  strives  for  impartiahty  toward 
its  many  nationahties  and  races.     And  the 


NEGRO  AND  MUNICIPALITY    217 

New  York  Negro  in  his  turn  does  not 
allow  his  liberties  to  be  tampered  with  with- 
out  Protest.  But  the  New  York  citizen  can 
hardly  be  described  as  friendly  to  the  Negro. 
What  cathohcity  he  has  is  negative.  He 
fails  to  give  the  black  man  a  hearty  welcome. 
"Do  you  know  where  I  stayed  the  four 
weeks  of  my  first  trip  abroad?"  a  colored 
clergyman  once  asked  me.  I  refused  to  make 
a  guess.  "Well,"  he  said  a  little  shame- 
facedly,  "it  was  in  Paris.  Paris  may  be 
a  wicked  city  —  any  city  has  wickedness  if 
you  want  to  look  for  it  —  but  I  f ound  it  a 
place  of  kindliness  and  good-will.  Every  one 
seemed  glad  to  be  courteous,  to  assist  me  in 
my  stumbling  French,  to  show  me  the  way 
on  Omnibus  or  boat,  or  through  the  difficult 
streets.  It  was  so  different  from  America; 
I  was  never  wanted  in  the  southern  city  of 
my  youth.     In  Paris  I  was  welcome." 

"How  is  it  in  New  York.?"  I  asked. 

"In  New  York.'^"  He  stopped  to  con- 
sider.     "In  New  York  I  am  tolerated." 


CHAPTER  IX 

CONCLUSION 

A  NEW  little  boy  came  two  years  ago  into 
our  story-book  world.  When  Miss  North, 
taking  Ezekiel  by  the  band,  led  bim  into  her 
school-room,^  we  met  a  child  füll  of  what  we 
call  temperament;  dreaming  quaint  stories, 
innocently  friendly,  anxious  to  please  for 
affection's  sake,  in  bis  queer,  unconscious 
way  sometbing  of  a  genius.  We  saw  bis 
big  musing  eyes  looking  out  upon  a  world  in 
whicb  bis  teacber  stood  serene  and  reasoning, 
but  a  little  cold  like  ber  name;  bis  friend, 
Miss  Jane,  kind  and  very  practical;  bis  em- 
ployer,  Mr.  Rankin,  amused  and  contemptu- 
ous;  all  watebing  bim  witb  tbe  impersonal 
interest  witb  wbicb  one  migbt  view  a  new 
species  in  tbe  animal  world.  For  Ezekiel, 
unlike  our  otber  story-book  boys,  bad  a 
double  being,  be  was  first  Ezekiel  Jordan,  a 

*  Lucy  Pratt,  "Ezekiel." 
218 


CONCLUSION  219 

little  black  boy,  and  second,  a  Representa- 
tive  of  the  Negro  Race. 

Ezekiel  was  too  young  to  understand  bis 
Position,  but  the  white  world  about  him 
never  forgot  it.  When  he  arrived  late  to 
sehool,  he  was  a  dilatory  representative; 
when,  obHging  Httle  soul,  he  promised  three 
people  to  weed  their  gardens  all  the  same 
afternoon,  he  was  a  prevaricating  repre- 
sentative. He  never  happened  to  steal  ice- 
cream  from  the  hoky-poky  man  or  to  play 
hookey,  but  if  he  had,  he  would  have  been 
a  thieving  and  lazy  representative.  Always 
he  was  something  remote  and  overwhelming, 
not  a  natural  growing  boy. 

Ezekiel's  position  is  that  of  each  Negro 
child  and  man  and  woman  in  the  United 
States  today.  I  think  we  have  seen  this  as 
we  have  reviewed  the  position  of  the  race 
in  New  York;  indeed,  the  very  fact  of  our 
attempting  such  a  review  is  patent  that 
we  see  and  feel  it.  We  white  Americans 
do  not  generalize  concerning  ourselves,  we 
individualize,  leaving  generalizations  to  the 
chance  visitor,  but  we  generalize  continually 
concerning   colored   Americans;   we   classify 


220  HALF  A  MAN 

and  measure  and  pass  judgment,  a  little 
more  with  each  succeeding  year. 

Now  if  we  are  going  to  do  this,  let  us  be 
fair;  let  us  try  as  much  as  possible  to  dismiss 
prejudice,  and  to  look  at  the  Ezekiels  enter- 
ing our  school  of  life,  with  the  same  impar- 
tiahty  and  the  same  understanding  sympathy 
with  which  we  look  upon  our  own  race. 
And  if  we  are  to  place  them  side  by  side  with 
the  whites,  let  us  be  impartial,  not  cheating 
them  out  of  their  hard-earned  credits,  or 
condemning  them  with  undue  severity.  Let 
us  try,  if  we  can,  to  be  just. 

When  we  begin  to  make  this  effort  to 
judge  fairly  our  eolored  world,  we  need  to 
remember  especially  two  things:  First,  that 
we  cannot  yet  measure  with  any  aceuracy 
the  capability  of  the  eolored  man  in  the 
United  States,  because  he  has  not  yet  been 
given  the  opportunity  to  show  his  capability. 
If  we  deny  füll  expression  to  a  race,  if  we 
restrict  its  education,  stifle  its  intellectual 
and  sesthetic  impulses,  we  make  it  impossible 
fairly  to  gauge  its  ability.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances  to  measure  its  achievements  with 
the  more  favored  white  race  is  unreasonable 


CONCLUSION  221 

and  unjust,  as  unreasonable  as  to  measure 
against  a  man's  a  disfranchised  woman's 
capabilities  in  directing  the  affairs  of  a  state.^ 
The  second  thing  is  diflScult  for  us  to 
remember,  difficult  for  us  at  first  to  believe; 
that  we,  dominant,  ruling  Americans,  may 
not  be  the  persons  best  fitted  to  judge  the 
Negro.  We  feel  confident  that  we  are,  since 
we  have  known  him  so  long  and  are  so 
famihar  with  his  pecuHarities;  but  in  mo- 
ments  of  earnest  reflection  may  it  not  occur 
to  US  that  we  have  not  the  desire  or  the 
Imagination  to  enter  into  the  Hfe  emotions 
of  others?  "We  are  the  intellect  and  virtue 
of  the  airth,  the  cream  of  human  natur',  and 
the  flower  of  moral  force,"  Hannibal  Chollup 

^"The  World  of  modern  intellectual  life  is  in  reality  a  white 
man's  world.  Few  women  and  perhaps  no  blacks  have 
entered  this  world  in  the  füllest  sense.  To  enter  it  in  the  füll- 
est sense  would  be  to  be  in  it  at  every  moment  from  the  time 
of  birth  to  the  time  of  death,  and  to  absorb  it  unconsciously 
and  consciously,  as  the  child  absorbs  language.  When  some- 
thing  like  this  happens  we  shall  be  in  a  position  to  judge  of 
the  mental  efficiency  of  women  and  the  lower  races.  At 
present  we  seem  justified  in  inf erring  that  the  differences  in 
mental  expression  between  the  higher  and  lower  races  and 
between  men  and  women  are  no  greater  than  they  should  be 
in  view  of  the  existing  diflFerences  in  opportunity."  W.  I. 
Thomas,  "Sex  and  Society,"  p.  312. 


222  HALF  A  MAN 

still  says,  and  glowers  at  the  stranger  who 
dares  to  suggest  a  different  Standard  from 
his  own.  Hannibal  Chollup  and  his  ilk  are 
ill-fitted  to  measure  the  refinements  of  feel- 
ing,  the  differences  in  ideals  among  people. 

This  question  of  our  fitness  to  sit  in  the 
judgment  seat  must  come  with  grave  insist- 
ence  when  we  read  carefully  the  literature 
published  in  this  eity  of  New  York  within 
the  past  two  years.  Our  writers  have  as- 
sumed  such  pomposity,  have  so  revelled  in 
what  Mr.  Chesterton  calls  "the  magnificent 
buttering  of  one's  seif  all  over  with  the  same 
stale  butter;  the  big  defiance  of  small  ene- 
mies,"  as  to  make  their  conclusions  ridicu- 
lous.  Ezekiel  entering  their  school  is  at 
once  pushed  to  the  bottom  of  the  class,  while 
the  white  boy  at  the  head,  Hannibal  Chol- 
lup's  descendant,  sings  a  jubilate  of  his  own 
and  butters  himself  so  copiously  as  to  be 
as  shiny  as  his  English  cousin,  Wackford 
Squeers.  Then  the  writer,  the  judge,  be- 
gins.  Ezekiel  is  shown  as  the  incorrigible 
boy  of  the  school.  He  is  a  lazy,  good-for- 
nothing  vagabond.  Favored  with  the  chance 
to  exercise  his  muscles  twelve  hours  a  day 


CONCLUSION  223 

f or  a  disinterested  employer,  he  f ails  to  appre- 
ciate  his  opportunity.  He  is  diseased,  de- 
generate.  His  sisters  are  without  ehastity, 
every  one,  polluting  the  good,  pure  white 
men  about  them.  He  is  a  rapist,  and  it  is 
his  criminal  tendencies  that  are  degrading 
America.  The  pale-faced  ones  of  his  family 
steal  into  white  society,  marry,  and  insinu- 
ate  grasping,  avaricious  tendencies  into  the 
noble,  generous  men  of  white  blood,  causing 
them  to  cheat  in  business  and  to  practise 
pohtical  corruption.  In  short  there  is  noth- 
ing evil  that  Ezekiel  is  not  at  the  bottom  of . 
Sometimes,  poor  httle  chap,  he  tries  to  sniffle 
out  a  Word,  to  say  that  his  family  is  doing 
well,  that  he  has  an  uncle  who  is  buying  a 
home,  and  a  rieh  cousin  in  the  undertaking 
business,  but  such  extenuating  circumstances 
receive  scant  attention,  and  we  are  not  sur- 
prised  to  find,  the  class  dismissed,  that 
Ezekiel  and  the  millions  whom  he  represents, 
are  swiftly  shufläed  off  the  earth,  victims  of 
"disease,  vice,  and  profound  discourage- 
ment." 

Now  this  is  not  an  exaggerated  picture 
of  much  that  has  recently  been  printed  in 


224  HALF  A  MAN 

newspaper  and  magazine,  and  does  it  not 
make  us  feel  the  paradox  that  if  we  are  to 
judge  the  Negro  fairly,  we  must  not  judge 
him  at  all,  so  little  are  we  temperamentally 
capable  of  meeting  the  first  requirement? 

"My  brother  Saxons,"  says  Matthew 
Arnold,  "have  a  terrible  way  with  them  of 
wanting  to  improve  everything  but  them- 
selves  off  the  face  of  the  earth."  And  he 
adds,  "I  have  no  such  passion  for  finding 
nothing  but  myself  everywhere."  Among 
cur  American  writers  a  few,  like  Arnold,  do 
not  care  to  find  only  themselves  everywhere, 
and  these  have  told  us  a  different  story  of 
the  American  Negro.  They  are  poets  and 
writers  of  fiction,  men  and  women  who  are 
happy  in  meeting  and  appreciating  different 
types  of  human  beings.^  If  these  writers 
were  to  instruct  us,  they  would  say  that  we 
must  individualize  more  when  we  think  of 
the  black  people  about  us,  must  differentiate. 
That,  too,  we  must  remember  that  when  we 
pass  judgment,  we  need  to  know  whether  our 
own  Standard  is  the  best,  whether  we  may 

^  Note  especially  the  stories  of  Alice  MacGowan  and  Grace 
MacGowan  Cooke,  and  the  poems  of  Rosalie  M.  Jonas. 


CONCLUSION  225 

not  have  something  to  learn  from  the  Stand- 
ards of  others.  Supposing  Ezekiel  is  delib- 
erate  and  slow  to  make  changes  or  to  take 
risks;  are  we  who  are  "  acceleration  mad/' 
who  acquire  heart  disease  hustling  to  catch 
trains,  who  mortgate  our  farms  to  buy  auto- 
mobiles, who  seek  continually  new  sensa- 
tions,  really  better  than  he?  Is  it  not  a 
matter  of  difference,  just  as  we  may  each 
place  in  different  order  our  desires,  the  one 
choosing  struggle  for  power  and  the  accumu- 
lation  of  wealth,  the  other  preferring  serenity 
and  pleasure  in  the  immediate  present? 
And  lastly,  after  having  praised  our  own 
virtues  and  our  own  ideals,  must  we  not 
beware  that  we  do  not  blame  the  Negro 
when  he  adopts  them,  that  we  do  not  turn 
upon  him  and  fiercely  demand  only  servile 
virtues,  the  virtues  that  make  him  useful  not 
to  himself  but  to  us?  ^ 

^  Careful  readers  of  economic  Negro  studies  by  white 
writers  will  notice  this  tendency  to  look  upon  the  Negro  as 
belonging  to  a  servile  class.  Emphasis  is  laid  upon  his  respon- 
sibilities  to  the  white  man,  not  upon  the  white  man's  respon- 
sibilities  to  him.  Any  one  familiär  with  the  sympathetic 
attitude  toward  the  workers  in  such  a  study  as  the  Pittsburg 
Survey  will  notice  at  once  the  difference  in  attitude  in  Negro 
surveys  by  whites,  the  slight  emphasis  laid  upon  the  black 


£26  HALF  A  MAN 

No  one  can  talk  for  long  of  the  Negro  in 
America  without  propounding  the  all-em- 
bracing  question,  What  will  become  of  him, 
what  will  be  the  outcome  of  all  this  racial 
controversy?  It  is  a  daring  person  who 
attempts  to  ans  wer.  We,  who  have  studied 
the  Negro  in  New  York,  may  perhaps  ven- 
ture to  predict  a  little  regarding  his  future 
in  this  city,  his  possible  status  in  the  later 
years  of  the  Century;  whether  he  will  lose  in 
opportunity  and  social  position,  or  whether 
he  will  advance  in  his  struggle  to  be  a  man. 

Looking  upon  the  great  population  of  the 
city,  its  varied  races  and  nationalities,  I 
confess  that  his  outlook  to  me  begins  to  be 
bright.  New  York  is  still  to  a  quite  remark- 
able  extent  dominated  socially  by  its  old 
American  stock,  its  Dutch  and  Anglo-Saxon 
dement.  Few  things  strike  the  foreign 
visitor  so  forcibly  as  that  despite  its  enor- 
mous  European  population,  American  society 

laborers'  long  hours  and  poor  pay,  and  the  failure  to  emphasize 
the  white  man's  responsibility.  Negro  laborers  are  still 
studied  from  the  viewpoint  of  the  capitalist.  There  is  one 
notable  exception  to  this,  the  study  by  the  governor  of 
Jamaica,  Sir  Sidney  Olivier,  on  "  White  Capital  and  Coloured 
Labor." 


CONCLUSION  227 

is  homogeneous.  But  this  is  not  likely  to 
continue  for  very  long.  Wlien  the  present 
demand  for  exhausting  self-supporting  work 
becomes  less  insistent,  we  shall  feel  in  a 
deeper,  more  vital  way  the  influenae  of  our 
vast  foreign  life.  With  a  million  Jews  and 
nearly  a  million  Latin  peoples,  we  cannot  for 
long  be  held  in  the  provincialism  of  to-day. 
I  suspect  that  to  many  Europeans  New 
York  seems  still  a  great  overgrown  village 
in  "a  nation  of  villagers,"  pronouncing  with 
narrow,  dogmatic  assurance  upon  the  deep 
unsolved  problems  of  life.  But  in  the  future 
it  may  take  on  a  larger,  more  cosmopolitan 
spirit.  Its  Italians  may  bring  a  finer  feeling 
for  beauty  and  wholesome  gayety,  its  Jews 
may  continue  to  add  great  intellectual 
achievements,  and  its  people  of  African 
descent,  perhaps  always  few  in  number,  may 
show  with  happy  spontaneity  their  best  and 
highest  gifts.  If  New  York  really  becomes 
a  cosmopolitan  city,  let  us  believe  the  Negro 
will  bring  to  it  his  highest  genius  and  will 
walk  through  it  simply,  quietly,  unnoticed, 
a  man  among  men. 


APPENDIX 

The  federal  census  in  1900  contained  a 
volume  on  the  Negro  in  the  United  States,  a 
source  of  information  quoted  by  nearly  every 
writer  on  the  American  Negro.  The  tables 
in  that  vohime,  however,  do  not  classify  by 
cities,  and  any  one  desiring  information  re- 
garding  the  Negro  in  some  especial  city  must 
search  through  other  volumes.  As  this  is  a 
lengthy  task,  I  am  aflSxing  a  list  of  the  tables 
in  the  census  of  1900,  treating  of  the  Negro 
in  New  York  City,  beheving  that  it  may  also 
be  a  guide  to  students  of  the  new  census  of 
1910,  who  wish  to  find  New  York  Negro 
statistics. 

Population.     Vol.  I,  Part  I.     Published  1901. 

Page  868,  Table  57.  Aggregate,  white,  and  colored 
Population  distributed  according  to  native  or  foreign 
parentage,  for  cities  having  25,000  inhabitants  or  more: 
1900. 

Page  934,  Table  81.  Total  males  twenty-one  years 
of  age  and  over,  elassified  by  general  nativity,  color, 
229 


230  HALF  A  MAN 

and  literacy,  for  cities  having  25,000  inhabitants  or 
more:  1900. 

Vol.  II.    Published  1902. 

Page  163,  Table  19.  Persons  of  school  age,  five  to 
twenty  years,  inclusive,  by  general  nativity  and  color, 
for  cities  having  25,000  inhabitants  or  more:  1900.  Also, 
pages  165  and  167,  Tables  20  and  21. 

Page  332,  Table  32.  Conjugal  condition  of  the 
aggregate  population,  classified  by  sex,  general  nativity, 
color,  and  age  periods,  for  cities  having  100,000  inhabi- 
tants or  more:   1900. 

Page  397,  Table  54.  Negro  persons  attending  school 
during  the  census  year,  classified  by  sex  and  age  periods, 
for  cities  having  25,000  inhabitants  or  more:  1900. 

Page  737,  Table  111.  Persons  owning  and  hiring 
their  homes,  classified  by  color,  for  cities  having  100,000 
inhabitants  or  more :  1900. 

Vital  Statistics.     Vol.  III.     Published  1902. 

Page  458,  Table  19.  Population,  births,  deaths, 
and  death  rates  at  certain  ages,  and  deaths  from  cer- 
tain  causes,  by  sex,  color,  general  nativity,  and  parent 
nativity:  census  year  1900. 

Occupations.     Published  1904. 

Pages  634  to  642,  Table  43.  Total  males  and  females, 
ten  years  of  age  and  over,  engaged  in  selected  groups  of 
occupations,  classified  by  general  nativity,  color,  con- 
jugal condition,  months  unemployed,  age  periods,  and 
parentage,  for  cities  having  50,000  inhabitants  or 
more:  1900. 

Supplementary  Analysis.     Published  1906. 
Page  262,  Table  87.     Per  cent  Negro  in  total  popu- 
lation, 1900,  1890,  and  1880,  per  cent  male  and  female 


APPENDIX  231 

in  Negro  population,  per  cent  illiterate  in  Negro  popu- 
lation  at  least  ten  years  of  age,  and  among  negro  males 
of  voting  age,  and  per  10,000  distribution  of  Negro 
pupulation  by  age  periods. 

Women  at  Work.     Published  1907. 

Page  146,  Table  9.  Number  and  percentage  of 
breadwinners  in  female  population,  sixteen  years  of 
age  and  over,  classified  by  race  and  nativity,  for  cities 
having  at  least  50,000  inhabitants:   1900. 

Pages  147  to  151,  Table  10.  Number  and  percentage 
of  breadwinners  in  the  female  population,  sixteen  years 
and  over,  classified  by  age,  race,  and  nativity. 

Pages  266  to  275,  Table  28.  Female  breadwinners, 
sixteen  years  of  age  and  over,  classified  by  family  rela- 
tionship,  and  by  race,  nativity,  marital  condition,  and 
occupation,  for  selected  cities:   1900. 

Pages  354  to  365,  Table  29.  Female  breadwinners, 
sixteen  years  of  age  and  over,  living  at  home,  classified 
by  the  number  of  other  breadwinners  in  the  family, 
and  by  race,  nativity,  marital  condition,  and  occupa- 
tion, for  selected  cities:   1900. 

Mortality  Statistics.     Published  1908. 

Page  28.  Number  of  deaths  from  all  causes  per 
1,000  of  population. 

Page  376,  Table  2.  Deaths  in  each  registration  area, 
byage:  1908. 

Pages  566  to  568,  Table  8.  Deaths  in  each  city  hav- 
ing 100,000  population  or  over  in  1900,  from  certain 
causes  and  classes  of  causes,  by  age:  1908. 


INDEX 


Aldridge,  Ira,  137. 

Amalgamation,  168. 

Andrews,  Charles,  civil  rights 
of  Negroes,  214. 

Andrews,  Chas.  C,  on  educa- 
tion,  14;  on  industrial  op- 
portimity,  27. 

Archer,  William,  172. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  224. 

Arthur,  Chester  A.,  23. 

Association  for  Improving  the 
Condition  of  the  Poor,  159. 

Athens,  Ga.,  207. 

Atlanta,  Negroes  in  occupa- 
tions  in,  77,  91,  93;  Propor- 
tion of  Negro  women  to 
men  in,  148;  suffrage  in, 
206. 

Baker,     Ray    Stannard,     on 

suffrage,  205. 
Benefit  societies,  175. 
Birthplaces,  35. 
Boese,  Thomas,  15. 
Brokers,  real  estate,  45,  108. 
Brown,  William,  14f 
Bulkley,  W.  L.,  161. 
Burke  v.  Bosso,  215. 


Burleigh,  Harry,  126. 
Busmesses,  106-112. 

Cahill,  Marie,  133. 

Charity  Organization  Society, 

158. 
Chesnutt,  Charles  W.,  181. 
Chesterton,  Gilbert  K.,  222. 
Churches:    Baptist,    20,    116, 

123;  Cathoüc,  116;  Congre- 

gational,  20;  Episcopal,  20, 

113,   116,    120;   Methodist, 

20,  116. 
City   and   Suburban   Homes, 

41. 
Civil    rights:   state  bill,    213; 

violations  of,  209,  210. 
Clarkson,  Thomas,  32. 
Cleveland,  Grover,  17. 
Clinton,  De  Witt,  14. 
Cole  and  Johnson,  127,  133. 
Constitutional     Conventions, 

State,  11-13. 
Cook,  Will  Marion,  136. 
Cooke,     Grace      MacGowan, 

224. 
Court:    children's,  66. 

magistrate's,  202-204. 


233 


234 


INDEX 


Craig,  Walter  A.,  126. 
Crime:   among  children,    66- 
68;  among  adults,  189. 

Dahomeyans,  131. 

District    Nm-sing    Association 

of  Brooklyn,  159. 
Dix,  Morgan,  25. 
Domestic  Service,  80-83,  149- 

153. 
DowTiing,  Thomas,  27. 
Du  Bois,  W.  E.  B.,  183. 
Dudley,  S.  H.,  128. 
Dunbar,   Paul  Lawrence,   71, 

83,  131. 

East  Side,  42-44. 

Education:  colored  teacher, 
17,  18;  private  colored 
schools,  14;  public  colored 
schools,  15-19. 

Emancipation,  8. 

Ewing,  Quincy,  190. 

Fall  River,   mortality  among 

infants,  59. 
Finley,  H.  M.,  32. 
Frazier,  S.  E.,  18. 

Gaynor,  William  J.,  201. 
Government       service,      Ne- 

groes  in,  88. 
Greenwich  Village,  33-35. 

Haie,  Edward  Everett,  119. 
Hamilton,  Alexander,  14. 


Hampton  Institute,  110,  119, 

193. 
Hansell,  George  H.,  20. 
Haynes,  George  E.,  112. 
Health    Department,    40,    53, 

197. 
Held,  Anna,  133. 
HeU's  Kitchen,  37,  85. 
Hogan,  Emest,  134. 
Horsmanden,  Daniel,  7. 
Housing,  34,  36,  40,  45-51. 
Hunt,  John  H.,  against  Negro 

suffrage,  13. 

Janvier,  Thomas,  8,  33. 

Jay,    John,  on  emancipation, 

8;  interest  in  education,  14. 
Jay,  Peter,  on  Negro  suffrage, 

11. 
Jennings,  Elizabeth,  21. 
Jonas,  Rosalie  M.,  224. 
Jones,  Edward,  14. 

Keane,  Edmund,  137. 

Kent,  Chancellor,  favors  Negro 

suffrage,  11. 
Kidd,  Dudley,  52. 
King  V.  Gallagher,  16. 
Kingsley,  Mary,  70,  113. 

Lanier,  Sidney,  31. 

Lincoln,  Charles  Z,,  13. 

Lincoln  Hospital:  attitude 
towards  Negro  doctors, 
114;  graduates  of,  157. 


INDEX 


235 


Livingston,  against  Negro  suf- 
frage, 11. 
London,  Jack,  63. 

MacGowan,  Alice,  224. 

Manhattan  Trade  School,  161, 
162. 

Manumission  society,  14. 

Middle  West  Side,  35-38. 

MiUer,  KeUy,  86,  147. 

Morris,  Gouverneur,  on  eman- 
cipation,  8. 

Mortality:  among  infants, 
53-60;  death  rate  by  dis- 
eases, 192. 

Municipal  service,  Negroes 
in,  197. 

Music,  125-127. 

New  York  Conspiracy,  7. 

New  York  Milk  Committee, 
54. 

Newman,  G.,  Infant  mortal- 
ity, 55,  58. 

Nurses'  Settlement,  159. 

Olivier,  Sidney,  226. 

Palmer,  A.  Emerson,  18. 
Patten,  S.  N.,  38. 
People  V.  King,  213. 
Phillips,  Ulrich  B.,  101. 
Phipps,  Henry,  41. 
Phipps  tenement,  42,  51, 125. 
Pittsburg  Survey,  225. 
Police  department,  198-201. 


Poole,  Emest,  84. 
Population,    Negro,    9;    total, 

31. 
Pratt,  Lucy,  218. 
Prostitution,  155,  156. 

Ray,  Charles  B.,  24. 
Reason,  Patrick,  27. 
Religion  (see  Churches). 
Riots:  draft  riots,  25;  riot  of 

1900,    199;    riot    of    1905, 

199-201. 
Roosevelt,  Theodore,  18. 
Rubinow,    I.    B,,    relation   of 

death  rate  to  poverty,  193. 
Russell,  John  L.,  12. 
Russell,  Lillian,  133. 
Russia,    Infant    mortality    in, 

54;  mortaUty  and  poverty, 

193. 
Russworm,  John  B.,  14. 

Sanger,  William  W.,  153. 
San  Juan  Hül,  39-42. 
Schools  (see  Education). 
Scottron,   Samuel  R.,   on  in- 

dustrial    opportunities,    26; 

on  occupations,  78. 
Segregation:      churches,      19; 

dwelling  -  places,       48  -  50; 

schools,  15-19. 
Shirtwaist  makers'  strike,  163. 
Sinunons,  William  J.,  137. 
Slave  ships,  32. 
Slaves,   brutality   towards,   5; 

insurrections  of,  6-8, 


236 


INDEX 


Smith,  Gerritt,  24. 

Smith,  James  McC,  27. 

Smith,  Wiüiam  G.,  14. 

Stage,  127-137. 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  215. 

Stone,  Alfred  Holt,  on  Negro 
in  occupations  in  "South, 
75;  color  line  in  South,  89, 
92;  irresponsibility  of  Ne- 
groes,  102. 

Straus,  Nathan,  59. 

Street  cars,  discrimination, 
21-23. 

Suffrage:  past,  11-13;  pres- 
ent,  196;  Negro's  use  of 
suffrage,  204-208;  in  Athens, 
Ga.,  207. 

Tanner,  Henry,  126. 
Tenements  (see  Housing). 
Thomas,  W.  I.,  221. 
Trade-unions,  95-99. 
Trinity  Church,  25. 
Tucker,     Helen,     on     Negro 
craftsmen,  96,  98. 


Underground  Railroad,  24. 
Upper  West  Side,  45-48. 

Varick,  James,  20. 

Walker,  Aida,  157. 
Washington,  Booker  T.,   184, 

194 
Waterbury,  Daniel  S.,  12. 
West    Indies,    arrivals    from, 

48. 
Wheeler,  B.  F.,  20. 
WTiite,  Phüip  A.,  27. 
Williams,  Peter,  20. 
WiUiams    and    Walker,    129- 

133. 
Wüson,  H.  J.,  124. 
Wilson,  J.  G.,  8. 
Winterbottom,  25. 
Wright,   Richard  R.,   on  the 

city  Negro,  100,  104. 
Wright,  Theodore  S.,  14. 

ZangHill,  Israel,  137. 


,r; 


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